Inspector
Abberline is famous for his part in the Jack the Ripper case,
but here he is having another adventure. Sir Alfred Denby
has been killed in an explosion, but it is soon revealed not
to be an accident, but murder. Things become more mysterious
when another Denby reveals that nearly all of a large family
of brothers have met strange ends. Now it is up to Abberline
to try and save Professor William Denby, who is an inventor
and is working on a balloon project for the army. William
lives in the wilds of Wales, so Abberline and his trusty reporter
sidekick, Thomas Lloyd, have to travel there to prevent his
death and work out what it all has to do with some Roman statues.
The game is afoot! No, this is not Holmes and Watson but Abberline
and Lloyd. At times I almost forgot. There is plenty of room
for another Victorian pair of investigators, and I enjoyed
this story, which combined mystery with adventure and the
classic Conan Doyle frisson of the strange. This is a pacy
novel, as the duo has to save the professor amid some imaginative
plots to bring down the Denbys and grab the statues, a business
replete with colorful characters and some eerie moments. Mr
Clark is better known as a writer of horror stories, and those
hoping for just a detective story with any strangeness explained
away a la Conan Doyle might be disappointed. I truly enjoyed
this story apart from the superfluous insertion of a servant
girl’s talent for seeing visions of the future. This
is a supernatural element that detracts from the main story
and skews the whole novel into a different genre, but that
is merely my opinion. I would certainly read more in the series,
although I hope for more mystery and less paranormal.
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