Edinburgh, 1847. City of Medicine, Money, Murder.
Young women are being discovered dead across the Old Town, all having suffered similarly gruesome ends. In the New Town, medical student Will Raven is about to start his apprenticeship with the brilliant and renowned Dr Simpson.
Simpson’s patients range from the richest to the poorest of this divided city. His house is like no other, full of visiting luminaries and daring experiments in the new medical frontier of anaesthesia. It is here that Raven meets housemaid Sarah, who recognises trouble when she sees it and takes an immediate dislike to him. She has all of his intelligence but none of his privileges, in particular his medical education.
With each having their own motive to look deeper into these deaths, Raven and Sarah find themselves propelled headlong into the darkest shadows of Edinburgh’s underworld, where they will have to overcome their differences if they are to make it out alive.
The Way of All Flesh is the debut novel from Ambrose Parry: co-written by best-selling crime writer Chris Brookmyre and consultant anaesthetist Dr Marisa Haetzman.
My reading experience:
I would like to thank Netgalley and the publishers for my free ARC.
Written for those readers who enjoy history, intrique and the darkness of murder. Set in the mid nineteenth century this story has the atmospheric backdrop of the society of the period. Women are being murdered across Edinburgh. At the same time one of the most well renowned medical pioneers Dr Simpson is meeting with brilliant minds and experimenting in particular with anaesthesia. Our two protagonists student Will Raven and housemaid Sarah are about to reluctantly join forces to unravel the truth.
This is a fantastic debut novel, clearly well informed and structured to deliver a clever story of murder, medicine and money.
Appletree Books 