My review: ???
Watchers of the Dead by Simon Beaufort is set in London, 1882, with the Natural History Museum only recently opened! There are cannibals and dinosaur bones. Yes, three people from Africa are going to be on show, except they’ve gone missing.
Alec Lonsdale, a reporter for Pall Mall Gazette stumbles on the body in the basement of the Natural History Museum when hunting for the cannibals! This leads him to discover there’s been some other murders, and the cannibals are the police’s chief suspects!
I found Watchers of the Dead to be full of people from the time, which is really interesting from a historical perspective, but I feel the story fell a bit flat, with quite a lot going on that got a little muddled, and then what felt like big character moments being dealt with in one line.
When I think of historical crime, I think of C.J Sansom (Matthew Shardlake), Lindsey Davis (Falco), and Ellis Peters (Cadfael), and I’m afraid Watchers of the Dead didn’t quite measure up to these!
Watchers of the Dead was published on 1st July 2019, and is available to buy on Amazon and on Waterstones. I’ve found a link to where you can search for local bookshops, including independent!
The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins ????
The Wolf and the Watchman by Niklas Natt och Dag ????