The title should sound familiar to most people. “The dead will rise again” is to quote the bible literally and invokes the Abrahamic concept of how the dead will be brought back to be judged on the day of judgment. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this implies the book may have a supernatural bent to it; it most certainly doesn’t. To invoke G. K. Chesterson, the crime novelist, in order to stay a crime novelist, must not hit above the body, and so our dead men stay dead men in this book.
The Dead Will Rise is a historical mystery set in Leeds in the 1820’s. It’s the 5th book in the Simon Westow Mysteries series by the author and came out on the 7th of March and was published by Severn House. It focuses on two characters, Jane, a teenage girl with a dark past and Simon, the local thief taker or PI. Simon and Jane are called to investigate the disappearance of little girls body from her grave, at a hand of some resurrectionists.
This was, unfortunately, a more common occurrence than one would imagine. Medical schools in the UK were only allowed to use the bodies of convicts (which weren’t very many) and so body snatchers (or resurrectionists) would steal dead bodies from the grave in the night to sell onto a medical school to make a bit of money. Opening up a grave was not considered a serious felony under the law and so thieves also knew that they themselves, at worst, would be imprisoned for some time. Medical schools rarely asked where the bodies came from, and it was hard to track down body snatchers, meaning most people just got away with it.
That being said, Simon and Jane take on this case knowing that the girl was wearing a £2 dress that made this a theft with more serious punishment. As they go on they realize more powerful people are involved and there are more bodies that have been stolen and are attacked.
I liked the book and the slightly spooky vibe. You don’t know who is responsible and how things will turn out in the end. Jane is a phenomenal character and I loved how she wanted revenge so badly. I lowkey want to read the other books in the series just to get a bit more about her. However, I’m not sure I appreciate the deaths at the end of the book and how they were done. They didn’t make sense to me. I would read this author again!