So: full disclosure first: Lloyd Shepherd is the treasurer of the HWA, of which I am Chair. But he’s treasurer largely because I read his first book, thought, ‘here is a man with a brain the size of a planet, an imagination to match and insight into humanity that is rarely found and even more rarely displayed’ and what better qualities to keep the books in line?
When I was offered the chance to read the pre-proof copies of his new book, therefore, I jumped at it and truly, SAVAGE MAGIC lives up to the promise of THE ENGLISH MONSTER and more.
Second disclosure: If you’re reading this on my blog, then you only have to trip across three tabs to find out that any book in which dreaming is spelled Dreaming is either going to be thrown across the room in a couple of seconds, or is one to treasure and I wouldn’t be writing about this if it had fallen into the first category. that said, the Dreaming doesn’t come until page 221 and I was hooked long before that.
The date is 1814 and the place is (largely) London: a dark, dingy place of smells you walk into and an underworld where women have few choices beyond prostitution and men hunt for fresh meat with all the fervour of starving tigers. We are back with our old friends Horton and Graham: the former a Constable who has conceived the strange and novel notion that for every crime, there may well be a motive (a concept which eludes many of his peers); the latter, a semi-retired Magistrate who has occasion to employ him. In this book, their relationship is complicated by their spouses: Horton’s wife, has taken herself early to a Mad House, while Graham’s has gone to live with her own cousin as if she were his wife, taking their daughter with her. When gentlemen of means begin to die on grotesque fashion, each bearing a satyr’s mask, and the investigation leads into the underground world of prostitution and ‘Gentlemen’s Clubs’, the investigation draws closer to both wives, in ways that are as surprising to us as to them. Woven around and through all of this is the magic of the Dreaming, delicately done, so that when the protagonists are all busy telling themselves that they live in a rational world where witchcraft is no longer a crime, and so doesn’t exist, the reader is more than ready to believe that they are wrong.
This is a police procedural, but it’s set so early in the concept of police procedure that the framework is fluid and unset. As much as the rich, relished humanity, we are given an insight into the birth of the modern detective: young Jealous (brilliant name), the leg-man - frequently the hop-on-a-horse-and-deliver-an-urgent-message man - surely has a vivid future ahead of him, as a finder of motives and solver of crimes.
And this is a historical novel: another of those where the sense of time and place feels absolutely, entirely *right*. Andrew Taylor can do this, and AL Berridge, and here, Lloyd Shepherd creates a world without anachronism, peopled by humane, tender, ugly, beautiful, soulful, desperate, and above all, passionate people. I am so, so glad that I live in the 21st century, not the 19th, but if I have to go back there and witness it in all its glorious horror, this is the company I would choose.
The book will be out on July 31st. Order it from your local independent bookstore now.
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