The Halloween Countdown continues as Randy M. looks at Sarah Pinborough’s Mayhem.

Join us in the Countdown to Halloween discussion thread

MAYHEM by Sarah Pinborough (2014;Jo Fletcher [Quercus])

From May through July of 1887 in Rainham, Essex, along the Thames River, parts of a woman’s body were discovered, some wrapped in canvas and some in sacking, until nearly the whole body was pieced together, except for her head.

In October of 1888, also near the Thames, another torso was uncovered, this time on the site of the construction of the new Police Headquarters. Police surgeon and precursor of current forensic pathologists, Dr. Thomas Bond views the body at the scene. During his career Bond has exerted himself to understand the mind of a killer and analyze motivation, but this discovery troubles him even more than the concurrent crimes of Jack the Ripper.

For Bond, Jack seems a crazed but understandable man but the Torso Killer’s motives are more obscure, and so more disturbing. Even before the discovery of the torso Bond was having trouble sleeping. Throughout this summer violence has been more rampant than most, and he and his colleague and friend, Dr. Charles Hibbert, more than usually busy with the Ripper’s victims and the copy cats those crimes incite. Though not a believer in the supernatural, Bond has a presentiment of evil hovering over London, and feels in the streets a macabre atmosphere compounded of excitement and dread expectation. Even the normally cheery and unimaginative Dr. Hibbert seems to share Bond’s presentiment, his sleep troubled by the events of the summer as well.

What respite Dr. Bond finds comes from his interactions with Dr. Hibbert’s family, yet even that is compromised since his attraction to Hibbert’s daughter, Juliana, cannot be expressed as she becomes engaged to and marries James Harrington, a successful young businessman. Her subsequent pregnancy lightens the family mood briefly, but also forces Dr. Bond to struggle with his feelings. Increasingly, though, the investigation for the Torso Killer monopolizes his attention and convinces him of the imminence of evil.

Pinborough presents a wealth of characters, among them Investigator Moore, Elizabeth Jackson, who knows the killer, an Italian priest who declares himself a special emissary from the Vatican charged with destroying the evil hovering over London, and Aaron Kosminski. She divides her novel into sections devoted to the viewpoints of several of these characters, and the chapters devoted to Kosminski, whose visions of violence and blood had previously convinced his family to emigrate from Poland to avoid pogroms that killed many of their friends and neighbors, are especially strong. Again subject to visions, this time of the butchering of young women and of water, Bond at first considers him insane. But when his dreams, Kosminski’s visions and the priest’s pronouncements begin to correlate, what had seemed insane becomes plausible.

Mayhem is based on actual events: The Thames Torso Killer stalked London from the summer of 1888 through autumn of 1889. If not as well known as Jack, the killings were every bit as disquieting and frightening, and like Jack the Ripper’s murders remain unsolved. Dr. Thomas Bond was in fact a police surgeon at that time, visiting the sites where the Torso Killer’s victims were found as well as the sites of Jack the Ripper’s murders. Pinborough presents her novel as a mystery, using Bond as the focus for arraying and sorting the clues toward a solution of the puzzle. Meanwhile, the reader knows who the killer is from early on so the book becomes a cat and mouse game, and Bond’s dreams and his visions, along with the visions of Kozminski and the knowledge of the Italian priest, are as vital to their investigation as Bond’s medical acumen.

I have small criticisms. First, the novel’s ending felt rushed. This could be explained by the existence of a sequel; Murder is already out in the U.K. and in hardcover in the U.S. (paperback scheduled for February 2016). Also, I believe the material Pinborough has used would sustain a more searching novel, exploring the London of the time and reactions to the murders of both serial killers. Those quibbles aside, I was entertained by Mayhem. Pinborough writes briskly and to the point. The shifts in point of view work, as does the use of newspaper clippings (whether real or made up by Pinborough, I don’t know). The level of detail, the plausible nature of her characters and their reactions to events, her ability to set her scene, describe her setting and evoke some of the fear and excitement permeating London at that time work, and not least because she portrays it mainly through the eyes of a sympathetic murder victim and of a man from our past whose work still echoes in our time.

Other London terrors:
The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes
The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch
“Sagittarius” by Ray Russell (from Haunted Castles)

Join the Countdown to Halloween discussion

Share this post: on Twitter on Facebook on LinkedIn