RESURRECTION MEN

The Thrushmetal Review, May 2007
"While attending to the immediate medical needs of a young street urchin trampled by a nobleman’s carriage, Dr. Lambro tells the tale about a similar boy he once knew, named Victor. Victor, formerly of Modena, a London transplant, was cruelly orphaned and eventually sold into servitude as a street beggar. The dark, putrid, gray atmosphere of 1830s London is recreated here in vivid and sometimes brutal detail, accurately reflecting the environment of the era. While begging for his food and lodging, he befriends other children in the Master’s keep: Nico, a fellow Italian, and Rebecca, a blind girl with a wisdom and understanding of the world beyond her few years. Along with the Master and the juvenile beggars are a duo, Tipple and Biggs. These are the Resurrection Men of the title: body snatchers who procure corpses for resale to the medical community, which happens to be experiencing a renaissance of sorts. The burgeoning field of medicine requires cadavers — the fresher the better — for surgeons to dissect and unlock the secrets contained within. The duo attempts to lure Victor into the macabre arts of grave robbing using salvation from the streets as the lure.

"Welsh has incorporated gothic, mystery, and horror genres into a historical novel that is very readable. I made the mistake of attempting to eat macaroni salad while reading the vivid description of the Smithfield district, complete with the putrifacted animal carcasses, rotting fat, skins strewn about, blood spraying, walking ankle deep in gore, and all other manner of butchery by-products. The feel of the language of the time has been maintained without getting bogged down in exact replication — the cockney of Tipple and Biggs is explained by Victor — fact is the language is as foreign to him, being Italian, as it is to some of us reading the book as modern English speakers. The action and pace is steady and quick, rarely pausing, and finishes in an unforgettable, movie-quality fight-to-the-death.

"When readers finish, the experience doesn’t end with the last page. Instead, there is a code, which unlocks bonus content on the author’s website: www.tkwelsh.com."

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