Kim Miller
In Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde', Jekyll is worried about his dark side and tries to slice off that part of his personality, creating the monstrous Hyde in the process. Tim Major takes these characters and envisages them as a pair of investigators to explore the dark side of humanity.
The wealthy Muriel Carew attends a fund raiser party at a London mansion where she encounters her ex-fiance, Henry Jekyll. Suspicious stuff happens and on leaving the party she finds a dead body. Following up her suspicions, and with a few more clues, she finds her way to the obscure office of Hyll Investigations, the current workplace of her ex.
People in 1890s London have been reported missing. Their families have been contacting Jekyll to find them. And now Muriel is awkwardly imposing herself into his work. She proves to be a better investigator and together they stumble through Victorian London to discover the whereabouts of the missing, either alive or dead.
It is the nature of these abductions that gives Major his grist for the mill as he walks us down the stairs into some horrific basement of human desire and cruelty.
The two characters of Jekyll and Hyde form a symbiotic pair, one working in daylight and the other in darkness. Each one knows nothing of the thinking of the other but Muriel interacts with both, a complicated trick that Major handles well.
The novel carries itself well for the most part but I thought it lost some punch towards the end. The final crisis is sold short as the depravity behind the abductions is revealed and the denouement lets us down rather gently.
In Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde', Jekyll is worried about his dark side and tries to slice off that part of his personality, creating the monstrous Hyde in the process. Tim Major takes these characters and envisages them as a pair of investigators to explore the dark side of humanity.
The wealthy Muriel Carew attends a fund raiser party at a London mansion where she encounters her ex-fiance, Henry Jekyll. Suspicious stuff happens and on leaving the party she finds a dead body. Following up her suspicions, and with a few more clues, she finds her way to the obscure office of Hyll Investigations, the current workplace of her ex.
People in 1890s London have been reported missing. Their families have been contacting Jekyll to find them. And now Muriel is awkwardly imposing herself into his work. She proves to be a better investigator and together they stumble through Victorian London to discover the whereabouts of the missing, either alive or dead.
It is the nature of these abductions that gives Major his grist for the mill as he walks us down the stairs into some horrific basement of human desire and cruelty.
The two characters of Jekyll and Hyde form a symbiotic pair, one working in daylight and the other in darkness. Each one knows nothing of the thinking of the other but Muriel interacts with both, a complicated trick that Major handles well.
The novel carries itself well for the most part but I thought it lost some punch towards the end. The final crisis is sold short as the depravity behind the abductions is revealed and the denouement lets us down rather gently.