Tag: Edinburgh

Book recommendation – The Departed by J.V. Baptie

Published on by Kate BraithwaiteLeave a comment

the departedA body is found in a car boot following an accident, and Detective Inspector John Morrison is under pressure to identify the killer. Was it someone who had murdered before, several decades ago? Or is it a copycat killing?

Meanwhile, Trish, John’s ex-girlfriend, had been working hard to forget the past – until she finds new evidence about her aunt Moira’s disappearance nearly two decades earlier.

Did Detective Inspector Helen Carter miss something in the initial investigation in 1978, and could she live with the consequences if she had?

The past and present intertwine in this gripping case of murders and missing persons.

A week or so ago I was excited to receive a copy of J.V. Baptie’s second novel, The Departed. In a nutshell, it’s a crime novel set in my home town of Edinburgh with a dual timeline that I just loved.

Baptie’s first novel, The Forgotten was set in Edinburgh in the seventies and, reluctant as I am to call part of my own life ‘history’, Baptie got the historical flavour of the city and that period just right. I loved her female policewoman, Helen, and was keen to see what would happen to her in this follow up.

Well it was very interesting. Yes, Baptie went back to the seventies, but she also jumped her characters forward in time to 2008. Helen is still in the force, now working on cold cases, but a new case links back to a murder she worked on in 1977. Then there’s also the unsolved disappearance of Moira McKenzie. So how does that connect to the death of a young student, Sarah Smith?

The Departed is well plotted and moves at a great clip. Baptie adeptly handles a fairly large cast of characters, and her writing sparkles with crisp descriptions. I felt I could see everything very clearly and this would adapt really well for T.V.

Often these kind of books can be read as stand-alone and I guess that this is true here, but I’d strongly recommend reading The Forgiven first. It’s a great story too. You can’t get too much tartan noir in my experience.

baptieJ.V. Baptie graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2017 with an MA in Creative Writing. When not writing, she is also an actress and has appeared in a variety of children’s show and stage plays.

 

Dec 14th: The Anatomy Murders by Lisa Rosner

Published on by Kate BraithwaiteLeave a comment

“On Halloween night 1828, in the West Port district of Edinburgh, Scotland, a woman sometimes known as Madgy Docherty was last seen in the company of William Burke and William Hare. Days later, police discovered her remains in the surgery of the prominent anatomist Dr. Robert Knox. Docherty was the final victim of the most atrocious murder spree of the century, outflanking even Jack the Ripper’s. Together with their accomplices, Burke and Hare would be accused of killing sixteen people over the course of twelve months in order to sell the corpses as “subjects” for dissection. The ensuing criminal investigation into the “Anatomy Murders” raised troubling questions about the common practices by which medical men obtained cadavers, the lives of the poor in Edinburgh’s back alleys, and the ability of the police to protect the public from cold-blooded murder.

Famous among true crime aficionados, Burke and Hare were the first serial killers to capture media attention, yet The Anatomy Murders is the first book to situate their story against the social and cultural forces that were bringing early nineteenth-century Britain into modernity. In Lisa Rosner’s deft treatment, each of the murder victims, from the beautiful, doomed Mary Paterson to the unfortunate “Daft Jamie,” opens a window on a different aspect of this world in transition. Tapping into a wealth of unpublished materials, Rosner meticulously portrays the aspirations of doctors and anatomists, the makeshift existence of the so-called dangerous classes, the rudimentary police apparatus, and the half-fiction, half-journalism of the popular press.

The Anatomy Murders resurrects a tale of murder and medicine in a city whose grand Georgian squares and crescents stood beside a maze of slums, a place in which a dead body was far more valuable than a living laborer.” (Amazon blurb)

Why read The Anatomy Murders?

anatomy murdersIt’s not possible to grow up in Edinburgh without knowing certain stories. These include the murder of Lord Darnley, the story of Greyfriar’s Bobby and the body-snatching activities of Burke and Hare. I’ve been looking this afternoon for fictional retellings of their nasty little story but coming up empty handed so far. And this book by Lisa Rosner published in 2009 looks like the best non-fiction summary to be read. Of course there also the trials – I do love a primary source – and so if I do take the plunge with this book, I’ll certainly be reading the trial documents too.