Marisa Haetzman – BooksPlease

A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry

Published on September 22, 2021 by Margaret2 Comments

Canongate Books| 19th August 2021| 405 pages| Review Copy| 5*

This is the third book in Ambrose Parry’s historical series starring Will Raven & Sarah Fisher, set in 19th century Edinburgh. I loved the other books, The Way of All Flesh and The Art of Dying and A Corruption of Blood is equally as good, if not better.

Description

Edinburgh. This city will bleed you dry.

Dr Will Raven is a man seldom shocked by human remains, but even he is disturbed by the contents of a package washed up at the Port of Leith. Stranger still, a man Raven has long detested is pleading for his help to escape the hangman.

Back at 52 Queen Street, Sarah Fisher has set her sights on learning to practise medicine. Almost everyone seems intent on dissuading her from this ambition, but when word reaches her that a woman has recently obtained a medical degree despite her gender, Sarah decides to seek her out.

Raven’s efforts to prove his erstwhile adversary’s innocence are failing and he desperately needs Sarah’s help. Putting their feelings for one another aside, their investigations will take them to both extremes of Edinburgh’s social divide, where they discover that wealth and status cannot alter a fate written in the blood.

Ambrose Parry is the pseudonym of crime fiction author, Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman, a consultant anaesthetist. Will is a doctor working with Doctor James Young Simpson, a professor of midwifery, who discovered the anaesthetic properties of chloroform (a real historical character), and Sarah, is the Simpsons’ housemaid, but she now assists Professor Simpson and is studying medicine. The two of them have a complicated and somewhat spiky relationship, which continues in this novel.

The combination of a crime fiction writer and an anaesthetist works excellently in Ambrose Parry’s novels. The research into the history of medicine is extensive, making this book a combination of historical fact and fiction, a tale of murder and medical matters, with the social scene, historical and medical facts slotting perfectly into an intricate murder mystery.

The mystery begins when the body of a baby wrapped in a parcel, is found floating in the Forth. The child had been strangled with a length of white tape. Sarah meanwhile is involved in finding a missing child. When Sir Ainsley Douglas, a prominent and wealthy member of Edinburgh society is found dead from arsenic poisoning, Will reluctantly gets involved in the murder investigation. How the mysteries interlink gradually becomes clear and although I soon realised how Sir Ainsley had been murdered, I was puzzled about who did it and was completely taken by surprise when the culprit was revealed.

Like all good historical fiction, this book weaves together fact and fiction. The Historical Note at the end of the book sorts out what was real and what was invented. The subjects covered include details about infectious diseases, the difficulties women experienced in obtaining a medical degree, and crimes children suffered in the 19th century. I think A Corruption of Blood is an exceptionally excellent murder mystery and an informative historical novel, with great period detail and convincing characters. I look forward to reading more books by Ambrose Parry.

The Art of Dying by Ambrose Parry

Published on August 22, 2019August 22, 2019 by Margaret6 Comments

Last year one of my favourite books was The Way of all Flesh by Ambrose Parry (the pseudonym of crime fiction author, Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman, a consultant anaesthetist). The Art of Dying is its sequel, continuing the story of Will Raven and Sarah Fisher. Once more this is a combination of historical fact and fiction; the social scene, historical and medical facts slotting perfectly into an intricate murder mystery. Beginning in Berlin in 1849 with a dramatic scene, as Will Raven is attacked by three masked men, it is mainly set in 1850 in Edinburgh, when a mysterious illness baffles doctors, who are unable to identify the disease, let alone cure their patients.

Will Raven, now a qualified doctor has returned from studying in Europe to take up the post of assistant to Dr James Simpson, who was Professor of Midwifery at Edinburgh University. Still in love with Sarah, he yearns to be re-united with her, but Will is dismayed to find that she had married during his absence. She was formerly Dr Simpson’s housemaid. Now she is an unqualified nurse, helping with Dr Simpson’s patients in the clinic he runs from his house. But when Dr Simpson is blamed for the death of a patient in suspicious circumstances, Sarah and Will join forces to clear his name. In doing so they uncover more unexplained deaths. Will thinks he may have discovered a new illness when he finds that four members of the same family in a wealthy area of the city have died within two weeks.

Sarah’s has her own problems as she is keen to be more than Dr Simpson’s assistant, but is hampered by the limited choices that women had, and she battles for more equality. There is so much packed into this novel. As well as a feminist theme with its strong female characters, it focuses on medical advances and practices, including the use of chloroform and the ethics and the dilemmas that presented. It also highlights the differences between the affluent professional classes and the poor working class. And it is an intriguing medical murder mystery, with several sub-plots and a wide cast of characters.

I really liked the setting, giving a great sense of place and full of atmosphere that adds to the tension and suspense of the murder mystery. I also liked the way the narrative is interrupted by short passages in the first person giving glimpses into the mind of a murderer – based on a real 19th century figure – and gradually the identity of this person becomes apparent. The Art of Dying is a well written and complex novel with credible characters, some based on real historical people and using nineteenth century textbooks reflecting the medical thinking of the period.

I loved The Art of Dying and I’m hoping there will be a third book as I really want to know what happens next to Will and Sarah. Although I think it is perfectly possible to read this as a standalone novel, I recommend reading The Way of All Flesh, focusing on Dr Simpson’s discovery of the anaesthetic properties of chloroform, before reading The Art of Dying.

A Note From the Publisher

Ambrose Parry is a pseudonym for a collaboration between Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman. The couple are married and live in Scotland. Chris Brookmyre is the international bestselling and multi-award-winning author of over twenty novels, including Black Widow, winner of both the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. Dr Marisa Haetzman is a consultant anaesthetist of twenty years’ experience, whose research for her Master’s in the History of Medicine uncovered the material upon which this novel was based.

Many thanks to Canongate Books for an e-book review copy via NetGalley.

The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry

Published on September 2, 2018 by Margaret7 Comments

Edinburgh, 1847. City of Medicine, Money, Murder

Canongate Books|30 August 2018|417 pages|Review copy|5*

The Way of All Flesh is the debut novel from Ambrose Parry: co-written by best-selling crime writer Chris Brookmyre and consultant anaesthetist Dr Marisa Haetzman.

I knew as soon as I began reading The Way of All Flesh that I was going to enjoy it – it’s historical crime fiction at its very best.

Full of atmosphere and historical detail, I could easily believe I was there in Edinburgh in 1847 as Dr James Young Simpson, a professor of midwifery, discovered the anaesthetic properties of chloroform. It combines fact and fiction most successfully, the social scene, historical and medical facts slotting perfectly into the plot.

It begins with the death of Evie, a prostitute in Edinburgh’s Old Town, found by Will Raven, a young medical student about to start his apprenticeship with Dr Simpson. Will, Evie’s friend is suspicious, the place was reeking of drink and Evie’s body was in a state of contortion. He flees the scene, not wanting to be implicated in her death. There is a mystery surrounding Will – he has a past that he wants to conceal, and he is in trouble with a couple of villains who beat him, slashing his face when he is unable to repay his debt to a moneylender.

Will is anxious to fit in with the more genteel society of the New Town, where Dr Simpson has his surgery, a place where people from all levels of society congregated – the poor who attended his clinics, the wealthy who also wanted treatment, and the medical students and colleagues experimenting with new drugs and medical techniques. When Will comes across similar deaths during his work with Dr Simpson he is determined to find out who is responsible – was it the same person who had killed Evie?

Sarah, Dr Simpson’s housemaid is an ambitious and enterprising young woman who would love to have a career in medicine just like the male medical students. Initially she dislikes Will, but eventually they join forces to uncover the killer in the depths of Edinburgh’s dark underworld . Through Sarah’s eyes we see the frustrations and limitations that all women experienced and through Will’s eyes we see the grim realities and danger that women at all levels of society faced with childbirth and unwanted pregnancies, and the brutally primitive state of the medicine of the period. The medical scenes are indeed gruesome and the attitudes of some of the clergy with their opposition to the use of anaesthetics is deplorable. The authors have combined their specialities to provide a compelling murder mystery interwoven with the exciting discovery of chloroform and how it transformed surgery.

This is without doubt an impressive and well written book that gripped me throughout – definitely one of the best books that I’ve read so far this year.

And I am so pleased that this is not the end of Will as Chris and his wife, Marisa are planning more novels revealing the development of medicine and the part that the Simpson household played. Also, I see that Benedict Cumberbatch’s SunnyMarch production company has secured the TV rights to The Way of All Flesh.

Thank you to Canongate Books and NetGalley for my copy of this book for review.