Exclusive interview with novelist Denise Meredith and a review of her Victorian murder mystery
Rating: 3 stars
“Russel Wallace was Darwin’s alter ego and came up with similar ideas on evolution at the same time as the great man,” says Devoured author Denise Meredith. “But history has not given him the credit he surely deserves. I read a travel diary by him called The Malay Archipelago. The travelogue was full of amazing detail about taxidermy, specimen collecting, orangutan hunting and life as a Victorian scientist. Fantastic and inspiring stuff and I was sure there was a novel in it.”
Devoured, set in 1856, touches on evolution, murder, and a new procedure called autopsy.
The premise is engaging but the novel is dark. Meredith reveals interesting facts about how autopsies started to be used to solve crimes. With more character development of the main characters Devoured could become a must-read series.
Denise Meredith’s debut novel features inspector George Adams of Scotland Yard and medical examiner Adolphus Hatton. Will the new procedure of autopsy help solve the murder of Lady Bessingham, hit on the head in her own home with an ammonite fossil? Lady Bessingham was a patron of science, threatening God’s place in human creation. Hatton and his assistant Albert Roumande are also looking into the murders of young girls with pinpricks.
“As the Victorians were at the cutting edge of so much new scientific thinking, forensics seemed an obvious ingredient to add into the mix,” says Meredith. “That’s how I created Professor Adolphus Hatton and his chief diener (the person in the morgue responsible for handling, moving, and cleaning the corpse), Monsieur Albert Roumande of St Bart’s.”
“If there are any aspiring novelists reading this wondering how to get going, don’t think about it too much, just do it,” says Meredith. “I had builders in the house so it was hard to work anyway. So I simply started to mess about on the computer, thinking: why the hell not? I knew if I were ever going to write a book, it would be a murder mystery. I devoured them as a child…no pun intended…especially PD James and Agatha Christie, so that’s what I started to write.”
Meredith read a large number of books on the Victorian period to get a thorough grounding in the 1850s. To write Devoured Meredith researched early forensics, politics, the birth of socialism, needlework and dressmaking, pornography, taxidermy, medicine, natural history, and the Victorian layout of London, especially St Bart’s Hospital and the surrounding area of Smithfield’s.
Meredith lives in a small London village called St Margaret’s, near Hampton Court and the Thames. “Funny that I ended up here, so close to where I started my life, but my husband has to be near the city and we love Richmond Park which is very close by.”
She’s currently working on the sequel to Devoured and a contemporary crime novel.
Devoured (A Hatton & Roumonde Mystery) by D.E. Meredith. Hardcover, 304 pages, Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (October 26, 2010) , Language: English, ISBN: 9780312557683.
