‘The Way of All Flesh’ by Ambrose Parry

My Review (5 stars out of 5)

Edinburgh, 1847. Medical student Will Raven begins an apprenticeship to the renowned Dr Simpson where he meets housemaid Sarah Fisher – who also has an interest in medicine. Though the two initially don’t hit it off, they share a concern about a series of gruesome deaths in the city. While Raven has his own troubles concerning a debt to a villainous moneylender, he and Sarah try to track down the killer in the dark streets of Edinburgh. But their snooping leads them into a dangerous and shadowy underworld where not everyone is what they seem.

In case you didn’t know, Ambrose Parry is a pseudonym for Christopher Brookmyre and his partner, consultant anaesthetist Marisa Haetzman. Having read several of Brookmyre’s excellent novels (Boiling a Frog, A Big Boy Did it and Ran Away etc), I was keen to see how this joint venture would work out. I’m happy to say the pair have created a well-researched and thoroughly believable world that is not only packed with historical detail, but tells, by turns, a witty, shocking, and intelligent story. There were a few aspects of the writing that irked me a little (too many passive phrases etc) but aside from that, the storytelling is superb and the denouement nothing short of thrilling, with a nice little twist that took me totally by surprise.

As this is (currently) the first of four books in the Raven and Fisher mysteries, I’ve got some catching up to do.

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