Book Review : City of Devils by Diana Bretherick by Guest reviewer Gillean Somerville - Arjat

 When young James Murray, a Scottish doctor, trained by the great Dr. Bell of Edinburgh, the real life mentor of Arthur Conan-Doyle and inspirer of the character of Sherlock Holmes, arrives in Turin in 1887, hoping to work alongside the pioneering Italian criminologist, Cesare Lombroso, he is shocked to find himself plunged into a series of brutal murders which seem to implicate Lombroso as the prime suspect. 

The first murder takes place in fog by a statue of Lucifer and the fallen angels in the Piazza Statuto, the fabled Gateway to Hell in the heart of the city. The victim is a petty thief. A note fingering Lombroso is written in blood. The local police chief, Machinetti, no respecter of evidence, is delighted to find a reason to arrest him.

Lombroso is a celebrity, colourful, domineering, stubborn, dismissive of others who criticise his theory that criminality is genetic and can be deduced from an individual’s appearance. So he has enemies, some mean, some much more dangerous. Murray, who has demons of his own, works with Lombroso’s long-suffering assistant, Salvatore Ottolenghi, his housekeeper, Sofia, a reformed prostitute, and a young police officer called Tullio, to solve the baffling crimes.

The story takes a while to gather momentum. Don’t expect a fast-paced police procedural with crackling dialogue. The author is an academic criminologist, steeped in this period of turbulent change in the history of criminology, so she has a mission to inform as well as to entertain. She also sets herself a challenge in mixing real historical characters with imagined ones. But stick with it, for it’s an absorbing read that moves from university labs and conference halls into underworld taverns and a nail-biting chase through subterranean tunnels towards a thrilling denouement.
Check out our exclusive interview with Diana on tomorrow's Crime Warp