A historical fiction murder mystery set in 19th-century Paris in the famous Salpêtrière asylum. The story centers around two women, Laure and Josephine. Laure is a former patient at the asylum and current ward attendant, who is desperate to leave and find her missing sister, Amélie. Josephine is a young woman with amnesia who arrives at the asylum covered in blood and suffering from trauma. As the novel progresses, Laure and Josephine form a bond while navigating the questionable treatments within the asylum and attempting to find ways out of their respective dilemmas. Very well researched and more gripping than the title infers. Fact and fiction intertwine very believably and seamlessly. 4/5
A blind teenager, Joshua, receives a corneal donation from his detective father who was recently killed in the line of duty. This gives Joshua the gift of sight, but also the burden of seeing his father's final moments and the dark secrets he was investigating. Joshua soon realises that one of the donar eyes is that of his father and the other eye, the eye of his father's killer. Cleave's comedic faux pas of swapped eyes, builds brilliantly into a psychological thriller where donees start to demonstrate latent characteristics of the serial killer donar. Cleave develops this theme in such detail and integrates it so well into the whodunnit, that one could be forgiven for believing the "science". 5/5
The first novel in a murder mystery trilogy set in a dystopian future London. The story centers around a disoriented man with amnesia, named Sherlock Holmes by a stranger who fished him out of the Thames rive, ie Watson.Together they try to solve the mystery of Holmes' identity while also being entangled in another puzzling case which started with an airliner crash over London. Very clever writing, with true to Connor Doyle atmosphere, which works very well in the dystopian future London. The mystery in this novel focuses around Holmes more than any murder and thus creates the setting for the series which will follow. 4/5
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