Changes

Reader, be warned: there are grisly details aplenty in this tale of seamy backstreets and shameful secrets. The murders, and they way the bodies are displayed for the police to find, leave little to the imagination. But the book also employs the staple elements of the 'penny-dreadful' to excellent effect, to create the murky, foggy atmosphere of Victorian London so popular with readers of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. The rich and powerful abuse and exploit those they consider beneath them. Poverty and death are familiar bedfellows in the back streets of London, and illiteracy and ignorance are the trademarks of the country-side. Purloined letters and an extremely complex plot all add to the mystery and pleasure of this fascinating book, and many readers will look forward impatiently to the next volume in the series.

Further reading suggestion: Try [[The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale]], a true crime written as a story. And in [[Murder in Paradise by Alanna Knight]], a detective from Edinburgh travels to London to investigate murky doings in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.