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1858: London swelters, and trouble is brewing. Cholera too..
1858: London swelters, and trouble is brewing. Cholera too..
Forensic scientist Adolphus Hatton and his trusty assistant Albert Roumande have a morgue full of cholera victims to attend to, and an eager apprentice to teach. Life for them both is tough.
Outside in the city of London, life is just as difficult – there is a deep sense of a growing unrest. When a leading politician of the Irish Unionist movement is murdered, the flamboyant Inspector Grey calls on Hatton and Roumande to help solve the case. But Inspector Grey proves difficult to deal with – callous and hot-headed, he is a ticking time bomb. Not good in a city about to explode. They work to try and find a connection between the victims and a resolution to them all.
The city has many problems but the bombing campaign by a group of would-be terrorists is going to unsettle everything. Something else which is unsettling is the changes in the world of forensics. Developments and discoveries are coming together and there is a new method being explored – fingerprinting which could change everything.
London is humid, sweaty, dirty and dank. Ripe with disease and all kinds of death. Ideal in one way for Hatton and Roumande who work in the morgue. But cholera is taking people in their hundreds and the work is grim and sad. When there are more deaths than normal and that some have not died from natural causes, this is a forensic team who needs the new technique of fingerprinting to try and solve the murders. This is the birth of forensic science thought so nothing is as straight forward as it should be. Cholera on this scale is depleting the city of many people so the problem is to find the few murders amongst the victims.
On top of the cholera, London is being destroyed by another outbreak – that of the violence and anger of the Irish nationalist movement. There are many Irish refugees in the city who live in the slums and who have barely survived the Irish potato famine
London is a hotbed of anger, heat, disease and it’s all bubbling up into something very dangerous.
Author/ Guide: DE Meredith Destination: London Departure Time: 1858
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