Will Starling
After five years on the Continent, where he assisted military surgeon Alec Comrie during the Napoleonic Wars, nineteen-year-old Will Starling returns to London. The year is 1816, and Will is helping Comrie build a surgical practice in the city’s rough Cripplegate area. Romanticism and scientific discovery is in the air, and Comrie, as well as other men of science, such as the mysterious Dionysus Atherton, embark upon research into the very nature of life and death, research that requires a continual supply of fresh corpses. Happily for Comrie and Atherton, there are grave robbers—Doomsday Men—always ready to fill that demand.
When a grave robbing goes awry, a chain of events is set in motion that results in the murder of a moneylender and the arrest of young Meg Nancarrow. Will is convinced that the woman is innocent, despite her confession. His investigation uncovers an unholy alliance between the Doomsday Men and Atherton, as well as a conspiracy that draws him into its vortex, just as it has drawn Meg and several others.
Weir’s language is lush and evocative, rendering a detailed and authentic portrait of 19th-century London. His research is meticulous but never gets in the way of a fast-paced read. The book is filled with nefarious street people, grave robbers, thugs, debauched gentry, the walking dead, and egoistical surgeons willing to cross the lines of morality and decency for their brief moment of fame. This wonderful novel reads as though Mary Shelley had teamed up with Charles Dickens. It should not be missed.