The Yard (Scotland Yard's Murder Squad, #1) (Scotland Yard Murder Squad)

by Alex Grecian

Fans of The Interpretation of Murder and The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher will loveThe Yard, a gripping crime fiction novel from debut author Alex Grecian, set in atmospheric Victorian London. During the aftermath of the Jack the Ripper case, Scotland Yard's brand new Murder Squad are faced with their most gruesome crime scene yet. The Yard will take you into the dark side of Victorian London and offers a fascinating insight into the birth of CSI.

A new era of fear is just beginning . . .


1889, London. The legacy of Jack the Ripper has cast a shadow over the city.

Victorian London is in the grip of a wave of crime and murder, with its citizens no longer able to trust the police to protect them. The newly formed Murder Squad of Scotland Yard, made up of just twelve detectives, battles in vain against the tide of violence and cruelty.

When the body of a Yard detective is found in a suitcase, his lips sewn together and his eyes sewn shut, it becomes clear that not even the police are safe from attack. Has the Ripper returned - or is a new killer at large?

Walter Day, the squad's newest recruit, is assigned the case and finds a strange ally in the Yard's first forensic pathologist, Dr Bernard Kingsley. Can they find the murderer before it's too late? Or is London at the mercy of a serial killer even deadlier than Jack the Ripper?


Alex Grecian has worked for an ad agency on accounts for Harley-Davidson, Cub Foods, and The Great American Smokeout, before returning to writing fiction full time and raising his son. Alex is the author of the long-running and critically acclaimed comic book series Proof, and he lives in Topeka, Kansas, with his wife and son. The Yard is his first novel.

• ISBN10: 0399149546
• ISBN13: 9780399149542
• Publish Date: 29 May 2012 (first published 1 May 2012)
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Out of Print: 27 August 2015
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Putnam Adult
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 422
• Language: English

Reviews

[readingwithwrin]

“Your duty is to society, and the dead have always been a part of society. How we treat the dead says much about us.”

Victorian London is not a good place after the Ripper murders. The police/detectives are not well liked and in fact are some of the most hated people in the country at the moment. Add on a new detectives unit that is struggling and ill-equipped to handle murders because of the amount and how few resources they have to use. They are all overworked and barely solving anything. Now a detective has been murdered and with no idea who his killer is the new detective has to figure it all out, before another detective dies.

“London is locked in a sort of dance of propriety, and it seems to me that it has led to desperation among certain elements of our society.”

Overall I found this story to be interesting, but a little confusing at times because of how many different perspectives it had. If we would have only had around 4 of them I would have liked it a little more. I know it would have taken certain parts of the story out, but some of it just felt like filler to be. Walter Day and his wife and one of the other detectives and the killer were the most important in my opinion. In fact the wife could have had a bigger part of this story and I would have enjoyed it even more.
The killers part of the story made me so uncomfortable at times because of how he did things and the fact that he kept messing with things it was just so frusting because of how things kept happening and how everyone kept missing eachother because of how they were having to run all over London.
All the side cases I found interesting, and I especially liked one because of how it went back to the ripper case, but it all felt a bit overdone to me at times with the secretiveness of it.


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