Deviation Posting – The Lazarus Club – More Grave Robbing!

A few months ago I mentioned that any number of recent books, that have sold well, seem to be mentioning grave robbing. In Edinburgh recently and looking for a light read of a Sunday I picked up Tony Pollard’s The Secrets of the Lazarus Club, which also happens to have a bit of grave robbing thrown in – and where better to read about grave robbers than Edinburgh!

That’s not actually why I bought it – rather I liked the idea of the Lazarus Club, a supposed (it is a novel) club of mid-nineteenth century scientists featuring Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles Babbage, Charles Darwin and Joseph Bazalgette. They all end up involved in a mystery with shades of Jack the Ripper and plenty of grand British nineteenth century science – dissection, ship building, torpedos, difference engines, evolution and a cameo appearance by Florence Nightingale herself. Passed a Sunday afternoon very pleasantly. Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

‘Young surgeon Dr George Phillips is invited to meet Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Charles Babbage, Charles Darwin and Joseph Bazalgette at an undisclosed location in London, 1857. A meeting of the greatest minds of the age. There the Lazarus Club meets to discuss ideas so unorthodox they cannot be voiced in public, so advanced they will change the course of history. A brotherhood of questionable morality.

Meanwhile, mutilated bodies washed up from the murky Thames lead police to Dr Phillips’ door: can he help solve some brutal murders? A dark and twisted conspiracy. Soon Dr Phillips realises that the Lazarus Club is being used by a member for some evil purpose. Can he discover who in time to prevent an extraordinary invention falling into the wrong hands?’

There’s also an extract here