The Fiend in Human: A Victorian Thriller

by John MacLachlan Gray

Book Overview

It's 1852, and the ranks of the London poor have doubled. In the swollen shadow of the great St. Giles Rookery, fallen women attract the perfumed dandies of the West End into a vicious circle of venality, vanity, and vice. Edmund Whitty, correspondent for The Falcon, the city's second-best sensational tabloid, writes whatever will stimulate the reader, delay his (increasingly physical) creditors, and supply him with the alcohol and opiates required...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312282842
• ISBN13: 9780312282844
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A gritty portrayal of a predator in the underbelly of Victorian London!

With no small amount of national pride, I'm thrilled to report that mere superlatives somehow seem insufficient to convey Gray's debut success with The Fiend in Human. Edmund Whitty is a profligate, dissolute freelance journalist who has succumbed to every known Victorian vice save womanizing - snuff, cigarettes, gin, opium, laudanum, and Acker's Chlorodine (a potent mixture of opium, marijuana and cocaine in alcohol!) Despite having achieved a measure of journalistic fame and public notoriety by assigning the moniker "Chokee Bill" to William Ryan, currently awaiting execution for the strangulation and grisly mutilation of five ladies of questionable virtue, Whitty struggles with an ongoing desperate need to produce the income required to stave off gambling debtors who won't hesitate to use a physical beating to persuade payment. In the course of searching out new "crisp copy", lurid sensational pieces he can submit to his tight-fisted editor, he meets the impoverished Henry Owler, a "patterer" who wishes to render Ryan's last confession before his hanging into "true crime" verse. But Ryan (not unlike other convicted criminals, of course) protests he is innocent and circumstances begin to persuade Owler and Whitty that Ryan is indeed telling the truth. The signature white scarf killings have continued, swept under the carpet and hushed up by one and all - the police, the merchants, the petty criminals and even the poverty stricken residents of the local neighbourhood! Whitty in a desperate bid to achieve real fame in a fading, limpid journalistic career and financial freedom from the debtors who are relentlessly hounding him, decides to stake all on proving Ryan's innocence. Gray has masterfully married the ascerbically witty, comic and always flowery Dickensian dialogue with Anne Perry's superb, elegant atmospheric descriptions of Victorian London life and then improved both by taking a step down into a much grittier, earthier representation of real characters living real lives. Two gentlemen Oxford swells pass wastrel days around gaming, sex and booze. The pain and wretched difficulties of daily life in a London slum are portrayed in exquisite, graphic detail that might warrant a warning to sensitive viewers were the medium television instead of a novel. Older female chaperones, quaintly termed "confidential friends", are employed to protect the nominal virtue of young ladies of marriageable age. The surviving local champion bare-knuckles boxer is portrayed as a friendly publican quite capable of acting as his own bouncer. Steet walkers and hookers are picked up by "gentleman" johns with a ritualized stylized dialogue and negotiation that, by today's standards, is absolutely hilarious. You'll be treated, for example, to Gray's wonderful Dickensian variation on a simple theme that you and I would have written as simply "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder": "For in truth there exists no young female (charwoman or countess, schoolgirl or

A gritty portrayal of a predator in the underbelly of Victorian London!

With no small amount of national pride, I'm thrilled to report that mere superlatives somehow seem insufficient to convey Gray's debut success with The Fiend in Human. Edmund Whitty is a profligate, dissolute freelance journalist who has succumbed to every known Victorian vice save womanizing - snuff, cigarettes, gin, opium, laudanum, and Acker's Chlorodine (a potent mixture of opium, marijuana and cocaine in alcohol!) Despite having achieved a measure of journalistic fame and public notoriety by assigning the moniker "Chokee Bill" to William Ryan, currently awaiting execution for the strangulation and grisly mutilation of five ladies of questionable virtue, Whitty struggles with an ongoing desperate need to produce the income required to stave off gambling debtors who won't hesitate to use a physical beating to persuade payment. In the course of searching out new "crisp copy", lurid sensational pieces he can submit to his tight-fisted editor, he meets the impoverished Henry Owler, a "patterer" who wishes to render Ryan's last confession before his hanging into "true crime" verse. But Ryan (not unlike other convicted criminals, of course) protests he is innocent and circumstances begin to persuade Owler and Whitty that Ryan is indeed telling the truth. The signature white scarf killings have continued, swept under the carpet and hushed up by one and all - the police, the merchants, the petty criminals and even the poverty stricken residents of the local neighbourhood! Whitty in a desperate bid to achieve real fame in a fading, limpid journalistic career and financial freedom from the debtors who are relentlessly hounding him, decides to stake all on proving Ryan's innocence. Gray has masterfully married the ascerbically witty, comic and always flowery Dickensian dialogue with Anne Perry's superb, elegant atmospheric descriptions of Victorian London life and then improved both by taking a step down into a much grittier, earthier representation of real characters living real lives. Two gentlemen Oxford swells pass wastrel days around gaming, sex and booze. The pain and wretched difficulties of daily life in a London slum are portrayed in exquisite, graphic detail that might warrant a warning to sensitive viewers were the medium television instead of a novel. Older female chaperones, quaintly termed "confidential friends", are employed to protect the nominal virtue of young ladies of marriageable age. The surviving local champion bare-knuckles boxer is portrayed as a friendly publican quite capable of acting as his own bouncer. Steet walkers and hookers are picked up by "gentleman" johns with a ritualized stylized dialogue and negotiation that, by today's standards, is absolutely hilarious. You'll be treated, for example, to Gray's wonderful Dickensian variation on a simple theme that you and I would have written as simply "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder": "For in truth there exists no young female (charwoman or countess, schoolgirl or flo

A Literary Entertainment

Gray's gifts as a dramatist are in evidence throughout this fine novel. The dialouge and period detail are marvelous. Strange that this ambitiuous entertainment didn't get the reviews lavished on Mr. Timothy which was fine but not as well-written.

Sensational!

Victorian London is abuzz with news of a serial killer in their midst. That buzz is fed by profit-driven newspaper columnists who each strive for the most sensational story.Edmund Whitty is one such columnist for The Falcon. He is also a drunken lout with steep gambling debts that he can't seem to pay. One evening he is beaten severely as he leaves his favorite drinking place. He is subsequently spirited to the deepest underbelly of Victorian London society to be confronted by a man whom Whitty has recently defamed in a recent newspaper column.Whitty's world turns upside down and author John MacLachlan Gray's excellent novel takes off. I don't know that I would, like the book's cover, classify this book as a thriller. This is a suspense novel of the first rate. But it is not a typical thriller where action overrides reason in forwarding it's plot. Rather, Gray has written a fantastic story of crime, injustice and retribution centered around less-than-regal Victorian London society. His detailed depictions of life in London's underbelly are so effective that the reader can smell the aroma of the unkempt and yet feel the nobility of their humanity. His equally honest portrayal of human foibles and the wrongs of class consciousness are settled in the reader's mind. His plot is unpredictable and surprises abound. Yet there is still a rousing ending that will leave the reader cheering.This book is a must read and should be on recommended Victorian reading lists everywhere, with only a couple of warnings. This is a work of historical excellence. As an American, it took me a while to become accustomed to the Victorian slang and other linguistic derivations of the time. But keep going, dear readers. For the language will become clear and that accuracy in language makes the book so much more genuine. There is no modern sensibility at play here. No cheap effort, the langauge helps to make the setting real.This is also not the light happy fiction that many an American reader has come to expect from best-sellers. This is quality realism. Life in London's underbelly of the time was not pretty. Societal mores called for survival skills that some now will find repugnant. Gray's characters are real. None are perfect but all are very human. Read this book! It is a historical treasure.

Darkest Victorian London spawns a killer

Victorian London comes alive in all its squalor, filth, stink and teeming humanity in this clever, elegantly written thriller about a down-on-his-luck journalist determined to make his name by saving an innocent man from the gallows.Edmund Whitty covers public hangings and other juicy topics of the day for a popular scandal sheet, which just about keeps him in drink and opium. He's fallen a notch from his Oxford Days, but not so low he can't feel ashamed when his cruel, clever jeering ruins the career of a "patterer," Henry Owler, whose sale of true crime verses barely keeps his daughter and his ward in greasy soup and straw pallets.Owler seeks the exclusive confession of a serial killer, William Ryan, dubbed Chokee Bill, "the fiend in human form," and extracts a promise from Whitty (by arranging an involuntary visit to a labyrinthine slum) to resurrect his reputation if his verses prove true. Owler has an in at the prison, but there's a problem. Chokee Bill insists on his innocence and the killings have continued - hushed by the police, the merchants, even the pickpockets and Owler himself - all the people who suffered while fear of the fiend kept business away. Only Whitty, ever in need of a sensational story for his readers - has reason to pursue the real killer.Gray takes us into the lodgings of the privileged and the reeking shacks of the destitute, the variously appointed taverns of journalists, prostitutes, thieves and worse. He takes us to brothels and drawing rooms and the prison cells of condemned men. And he spins a classic yarn full of heroism and hypocrisy, viciousness and desperation, thrills and just desserts and low blows.The atmosphere is odoriferous and visual, the plot full of characters who belie their appearances, and the writing is witty, sardonic and Dickensian. If you like Caleb Carr, you will love John MacLachlan Gray.