The Shadows and the Dust (The Dr Jack Cuthbert Mysteries)
Jack Cuthbert goes Gothic. This is the fourth in Gaw’s Jack Cuthbert series, this time set in an orphanage run by an order of nuns who find they have three unknown children buried in their orchard, the latest interred only two days previously.
Jack Cuthbert is a forensic pathologist working for Scotland Yard in the 1930s. The great strength of the series is its technical detail. We follow Jack’s postmortem examinations step by step, test by test, finding out what they tell us about the victim and the crime, using only the techniques available in 1931. In this latest book there are of course three post mortems. My doctor daughter is waiting eagerly for me to pass it on to her.
The novel is structured as a classic whodunnit; murder in a closed setting with a finite list of suspects. To my taste the culprit breaks down too easily when confronted with their guilt, but this is a minor fault.
As with the previous books in the series, there is a parallel story harking back to Jack’s past, this time to his schooldays at a leading Scottish public school. Some of these flashbacks have been very interesting and relevant, but I did not think that this time it added anything to the novel. We merely learned what a brilliant pupil he had been and how loyal to his school. Dual narratives are difficult to manage, as one narrative is often much stronger than the other which then becomes a nuisance holding up the main flow of the book. If you like whodunnits with a strong and authentic medical setting, this is for you.
