The Death Collector

Notes:

In many respects, this book is a slightly grown-up version of the author's Invisible Detective series. Set in the perennially-appealing Victorian London, and making use of that era's endearing combination of engineering ingenuity, colourful characters and atmospheric fogs. The main characters are only slightly older than their counterparts in the other series and it — so far — lacks the split-time device but the effect is very similar. If you liked that series you'll probably like this, and you won't need to be very much older, either, as the level of vocabulary and sophistication is about the same.

Taken in its own right, this is an averagely engaging, lightweight adventure story with some Victorian SciFi thrown in for people who like that kind of thing. The characters are mostly by-the-book, but not entirely without interest. George Archer is the Unassuming Hero: a clock mender working for the British Museum who becomes unwillingly involved in a far-fetched plot hatched by the Manic Millionaire with two Thuggish Henchmen. He falls in with the Resourceful Female: Liz Oldfield, sparky daughter of a clergyman with aspirations to be an actress. Helping them out are the Artful Dodger: Eddie Hopkins, the pickpocket with a soft heart, and the Wise Elder: Sir William Protheroe, with faintly mysterious connections and a surprisingly sprightly agility. (The author is well-known as an author within the Dr Who series, and it wouldn't surprise me if that had been an influence on this character in particular).

The Grotesquerie enters from the start and centres around a fairly batty scheme to build a mechanical steam-powered army of reanimated humans and animals. This already includes a dinosaur which stalks the peasoupered streets of London and one of George's former colleagues. The idea is that you can revive pretty much anything by filling its brain with electricity and you can control it by performing some ad-hoc brain surgery. It's the old Frankenstein syndrome: silly, and offensive if taken seriously, but just enough to fill out the plot.

On the way, Liz and George attend a séance with a view to contacting the dead-but-reanimated Wilkes. The medium is obviously a charlatan and the séance itself fraudulent, but at a certain point it's clear that Wilkes, in Lorimore's lab, is in fact carrying out the spirit writing which the others are witnessing. It's not clear what logic this is supposed to follow, and no explanation is attempted, not even by our token religious character, Liz's parson father.

To defend himself and his friends, George adapts a couple of his clockwork devices, one to fire ball-bearings, the other to explode at a certain time. Although the targets are obvious wrongdoers, both are used quite ruthlessly, and possibly kill one henchman. On another occasion, clearly in self-defence, George hits a part-human hard on the head with a rock. In general, the violence in the story is no more than you expect in a Victorian SciFi romp but these odd moments are noticeably stronger in their impact.

Of course, Liz falls for George, and they unofficially adopt Eddie. Liz is considered unladylike for her desire to work in the theatre, and certainly she's going against her father's wishes. By Victorian standards, she's probably also going beyond the pale by visiting him alone at his house although loosely chaperoned at various times by Eddie and Sir William. By any modern standards, however, her relationship with George is entirely innocent and above-board.