The Yard Alex Grecian Review

Grecian imaginatively imparts a contemporary sensibility to the legendary tale and illustrator rossmo s tone is decidedly different from the whimsy of picture book versions booklist online.

The yard alex grecian review.

Grecian creates a large and eccentric cast of characters including a detective inspector who can t stop making jokes usually bad puns a mentally disturbed dancing man a brutal tailor whose telltale shears are used in untoward ways the seductive wife of a doctor and two coldblooded prostitutes now perpetrators of crime rather than victims. And i mean that in the best possible way lisa lutz author of the spellman files. Indeed the enterprising blackleg on his own could profitably drive a sequel and. It s set in london in 1889 and is a novel about the early days of the murder squad.

This deliciously trashy first novel by alex grecian walks the genre back to the era of jack the ripper with its. Alex grecian s the yard is a brilliantly crafted debut novel with unforgettable characters. Read it only for the hilarity of the wrongness of half his descriptions and his totally tin ear for period dialogue. The writing style of alex grecian literally transports you back to those victorian days of england but not into the lives of the upper crust but into the lives of the london working class and the poor.

Reviews from the american library assoc. An utterly gripping tale perfectly evokes victorian london and brings you right back to the depraved and traumatic days of jack the ripper. I can tell you that for any women reading this book it may make you a bit squeamish at times and is not for the faint hearted. Consider the yard putnam 26 95 a crude corrective to those literary leanings.

Grecian has a fine flexible curious voice and the yard looks as if it could be the start of a promising series. Newly promoted detective walter day is given the responsibility of finding the murderer of a fellow detective who has been gruesomely stuffed into a trunk. Alex grecian has given us a solid bit of insight into the early days of scotland yard and the development of police work as we know it today.