The Crown Agent

This period adventure has you held in its thrall right from the off. I couldn't help but feel the same pleasure on reading Mr O'Rourke's 19th Century yarn as I first felt when reading Buchan's Hannay stories. The hero here though is a young Doctor, Mungo Lyon, who has to fight against injustice & corruption in high office.

Doctor Lyon was working at the Infirmary in Edinburgh when the ‘Burke & Hare Body Snatchers’ scandal erupted. He was investigated by the authorities over the matter and although not charged, he was barred from surgery.

For those unaware of the history of William Burke & William Hare they were two Irish immigrants both of whom worked as labourers on the building of canals. William Hare moved to Edinburgh and began a lodging house to which Burke became a resident. When another resident died leaving an unpaid accommodation bill the two men sold the corpse to Dr Knox at Edinburgh Infirmary. Burke & Hare had joined the notorious racket of providing corpses for the Infirmary's surgeons to research & practice medical procedures. But, rather than raid newly dug graves as other Body Snatchers did the two decided to murder vulnerable people in order to earn the fee paid by Dr Knox. They were caught, but then Hare turned informer and provided evidence against Burke who was hanged for his crimes while Hare was given his freedom. A strange kind of justice.

Anyway, back to the story Lyon is left living with his sister and wondering what career direction he should take. Then fate takes a hand when the Lord Advocate is in need of a man to undertake an investigation into the strange circumstances surrounding the ship The Julietta a trader left drifting in the Clyde, the murder of a lighthouse keeper and the disappearance of his assistant.

Mr O'Rourke has a great skill in creating a tense atmosphere and evokes the sights sounds and stench of the expanding industrial Clydeside settlements with aplomb. The investigation takes many a twist and turn as Lyon tries to make sense of the mysterious ship The Julietta and her dead crew. There is also a neat and ingenious thread around William Hare's reappearance. Who can Lyon trust, if anyone, what are the ties that bind the aristocratic Lord Alba and the Custom's Man?

There's a real sense of danger and suspicion at every turn that Dr Lyon takes which keep the interest satisfied and the pace bubbling along. This is a new author with an eye for the rare and unusual and with the skills and intelligence to create many more thrilling novels.