It’s 1820, and the physicians of London are on fire to unlock the secrets of human anatomy, some consorting with criminals to get their scalpels into a fresh body. Job Mowatt has become such a criminal—a body snatcher, a resurrectionist. The wages are just enough to keep his brilliant daughter, Ivy, clean and safe in London’s worst slum. When anatomist Percival Quinn asks Job to dig up a rare specimen—the wife of a powerful and dangerous man—Job knows instantly he is inviting trouble, but knows, too, that the payment would allow Ivy to escape the brief, miserable existence that awaits women of her class. All it will take is a single night’s work. A single night that will bring Job deeper into darkness and closer to death than he has ever been. Lords and ladies in their glittering mansions, six-bottle men and opium eaters in foul tenements, they all take their secrets to the grave…and sometimes the resurrectionist brings them back.

Review:

Ominous, vivid, and gritty!

The Resurrectionist is an eerie, sinister, absorbing tale set in London in the 1820s at a time when the city was bustling, scavenging was prevalent, respectability meant everything, and a shortage of cadavers for anatomical research created a need for those with a stomach to dig in the dirt and retrieve the flesh and bones of those recently buried.

The prose is meticulous and tight. The characters are hardened, troubled, and resourceful. And the plot, told from multiple perspectives, is a menacing tale about life, loss, tragedy, desperation, survival, manipulation, abuse, deviance, violence, class disparity, body snatching, and murder.

Overall, The Resurrectionist is a dark, gothic, intense novel by Scheuring that does a wonderful job of interweaving historical facts and compelling fiction into a suspenseful mystery that is deliciously atmospheric and disturbingly entertaining.

This novel is available now.

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