The Art of Dying
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4.4 • 8 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
'Parry's Victorian Edinburgh comes vividly alive – and it's a world of pain' Val McDermid
'Brilliantly conceived, fiendishly plotted' Mick Herron
SHORTLISTED FOR THE McILVANNEY PRIZE 2020
A Raven and Fisher Mystery: Book 2
Edinburgh, 1849. Hordes of patients are dying all across the city, with doctors finding their remedies powerless. And a whispering campaign seeks to paint Dr James Simpson, pioneer of medical chloroform, as a murderer.
Determined to clear Simpson’s name, his protégé Will Raven and former housemaid Sarah Fisher must plunge into Edinburgh’s deadliest streets and find out who or what is behind the deaths. Soon they discover that the cause of the deaths has evaded detection purely because it is so unthinkable.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1849 Edinburgh, Parry's outstanding sequel to 2018's The Way of All Flesh (the author is the husband-and-wife writing team of Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman) finds Will Raven still apprenticed to real-life surgeon James Simpson. Will and his sometime love interest, Sarah Fisher, who was once Simpson's maid, join forces to prove Simpson's innocence after a former assistant and a professor of surgery accuse Simpson of being responsible for the death of a patient through negligence. Simpson's accusers claim that the woman on whom he performed a procedure ("Something to do with the cervix, I think," Sarah says) died of a hemorrhage, as evidenced by the bloodstains on the mattress she died on. Simpson maintains that she died of inflammation. No autopsy was done to spare the feelings of the widower, himself a medical man. Chapters from the perspective of the unnamed killer, who expresses amusement that the murder has caused such a controversy, lend dark counterpoint to the inquiry. Fans of David Pirie and Katie Welsh, who likewise have set crime novels in Victorian Edinburgh, will be richly rewarded.
