Review by New York Times Review
FOUR years ago, Imogen Robertson submitted the first thousand words of a historical thriller to The Daily Telegraph's Novel in a Year competition. Her opening, one of five winners, was appealing but not sensational. It moved swiftly from a couple of children lying in bed, listening as their father welcomes some visiting musicians downstairs, to a reclusive anatomist receiving news that a body has been found nearby, and back again to the children, eavesdropping on a conversation between their parents. A date and various details - a violoncello, a maid, the anatomist's isolation from county society - established the setting as late-18th-century England. Now comes the complete novel. It isn't often that one gets to compare versions of an author's work and see how it has moved on: in this case, the early promise is fulfilled. The order of the opening scenes in "Instruments of Darkness" has been shifted, putting the discovery of the body first, which is always a good thing. (Kingsley Amis once said he wanted only to read books that begin: "A shot rang out.") There is, it's true, a slight hiccup in chronology as the story jumps back to the children on the previous evening. The dialogue is more expansive; the parents are reduced to one widower. All this is a sign of Robertson's engagement with her material, as is her decision to move the action to the month of June in 1780, when for seven days London was in the grip of a mob. American readers will also appreciate certain flashbacks to the days leading up to the Battle of Lexington. A body has been found on the boundary where the land owned by Harriet Westerman and her husband adjoins the great estate of Thornleigh Hall. Harriet's husband, a naval officer, is away, so she summons the aid of a mysterious recluse, Gabriel Crowther, who has taken lodgings in the neighborhood. In the course of her voluminous reading, she has encountered Crowther's paper in the Transactions of the' Royal Society, analyzing the signs murderers leave on their victims, and has correctly identified him as an anatomist. Thus begins an enjoyable association between Harriet, a no-nonsense English countrywoman, and the detached and world-weary scientist as they examine the body to establish both aie cause of death and its identity. As befits a Georgian landowner, Harriet commands that the corpse be brought to her stables so Crowther can conduct what amounts to a private autopsy. Harriet doesn't flinch; she isn't that sort. She washes the knife-wound herself and wields a pair of tweezers. Crowther warms to his companion and their shared task as their investigation bends toward the great house, Thornleigh Hall, where something strange and possibly sinister is afoot. Lord Thornleigh is a demented old man with a young and beautiful wife (who has a past, and a nasty reputation). The estate is managed, badly, by the second of the lord's three sons, Hugh, who returned disfigured from the American wars and has taken to drink. Further mystery surrounds the whereabouts of the eldest son and heir, who long ago set off for London and has not been seen or heard of since. Viewing the body, Hugh dismisses the possibility that it might be his brother, in spite of the ring in the dead man's coat pocket bearing the Thornleigh seal. Meanwhile, Robertson interlaces the countryside murder mystery with another, unfolding in a respectable music shop in London, whose charming proprietor is stabbed to death in front of his children by a sinister assassin with a yellow face. By now you will have made up your mind whether you like this kind of thing or not - and if you do, you will probably like "Instruments of Darkness" a lot. It's a sensitive melodrama, investing almost every character with a dark and sometimes unsavory past, its plot filled with signet rings, wills, adventuresses, concealed letters and dissection, all set against the pleasantly unpleasant background of the Gordon Riots, which prodded a mob of Protestant Londoners into an anti-Catholic frenzy. The climax, as might be expected, involves a chase across the ravaged city to ensure that justice is done to the wronged and that the wrongdoers get their comeuppance. (One of the malefactors, it appears, will be literally anatomized.) The plot is a little loopy, but the dialogue crackles along, and Robertson's enjoyment of the period and her characters is infectious. One begins not to mind the incongruity of it all - in the 18th century, could Harriet really befriend a single gentleman like Crowther without scandal? - not to mention Harriet's surprisingly modern ruminations on subjects like breast-feeding. Even the appearance of characters who seem to have been recycled from other books - the enigmatic manservant, the kindly guardian - becomes part of the fun. You could wish, perhaps, for a little mustard on the edge of the knife: there are moments when the plotting seems a bit too comfortable, and the resolution, involving a tragedy avenged and those orphaned small children, is a trifle pat. But I have a sneaking regard for Robertson's good people, who are as kind and anxious to do right as her villains are determined to do wrong. The sheer heartwarming goodness of the young country lawyer - who braves sleeplessness, ramshackle stagecoaches and mob violence to deliver his message to London - confounds my own experience of the profession. But I don't mind. Robertson's attention, like ours, is fixed on the happy and healthy relationship between Crowther and Mrs. Westerman, and that will do. Robertson writes very well. There is "history here, and repartee, and the shadows of truncated plots left delicately unexplored. And who, as the shadows lengthen on our lawns, could ask for more? Jason Goodwin's latest Inspector Yashim mystery, "An Evil Eye," will be published this month.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 6, 2011]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in West Sussex in 1780, Robertson's auspicious debut introduces the unlikely sleuthing team of anatomist Gabriel Crowther and independent-minded Harriet Westerman, mistress of Caveley Park. When Westerman happens on the stabbed body of a man, eventually identified as Carter Brook, on her land on the track to Thornleigh Hall, Crowther agrees to help her catch the murderer. The secretive Crowther, who's maintained a reclusive existence since moving to the area, finds that Brook's death may be connected to the search for a long-lost heir to the Thornleigh estate. Meanwhile in London, someone knifes to death Alexander Adams, who bears the same first name as the lost heir, in Adams's music shop. While the killer's identity will surprise few, the book works splendidly as a period thriller, with complicated leads and informative details that illuminate 18th-century England for modern readers. Dry humor leavens what otherwise would be a grim story line. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In 1780, Harriet Westerman, a British navy commander's wife, trades a life at sea for a more conventional home in the English countryside. But when Harriet discovers on her property the body of a stranger with his throat sliced open, she learns that life in her small village in Sussex is far from normal. In London, a seemingly unrelated murder occurs when a music shop owner is stabbed in front of his young children. Harriet enlists the help of Gabriel Crowther, an anatomist far more at home with the dead than the living. As Harriet and Gabriel delve deeper, they uncover a deadly secret that threatens to destroy a prominent local family. VERDICT Robertson's series debut offers an intriguing premise, but the story is marred somewhat by overwrought prose and villains who all tend to verge on caricature. For fans of historical thrillers and libraries with a healthy amount of wiggle room in their budgets.-Makiia Lucier, Moscow, ID (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A series of murders in an 18th-century English village leads to the investigation of a ruined aristocratic family by an unlikely forensic duo, in an enjoyable debut.Add another name to the ranks of historical criminology: Gabriel Crowther, student of anatomy and "what record a man's life left on his physical remains"; also a man with a dubious past who joins forces with feisty landowner Mrs. Harriet Westerman when a body is found on her property. London-based Robertson brings good humor and freshness to her story of sudden death and family intrigue, threading larger historical dimensions like the Gordon Riots and the American War of Independence into her rural mystery. Widower Alexander Thornleigh, heir to an earldom, who walked away from his heritage to marry the woman he loved, lives in London with his two children. The murder in West Sussex, near Thornleigh Hall, coincides with an attack on Alexander which leaves the children imperiled orphans. As Crowther and Mrs. Westerman investigate the first death, Alex's younger brother Hugh enters the story, a wounded soldier with a corrosive secret and an unpleasant steward. Guilt, cruelty and dark affections are stirred into the pot as Robertson pulls her London and village stories together in a denouement ringing with leopards' roars and purified by fire.More a whydunit than a whodunit, but spirited, quality entertainment nonetheless.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
