About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

MR TIMOTHY
by Louis Bayard
John Murray, September 2004
400 pages
12.99GBP
ISBN: 0719567017


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

MR TIMOTHY is described on the front cover as a Dickensian thriller and it lives up to both of these terms. This book begins with "Not so tiny anymore, that's a fact" as we enter the world of an adult Tiny Tim in 1860s London.

Timothy is now 23 years old and his childhood illness has been largely outgrown -- he still has a slight halt in his walk and suffers some pain in the cold and wet weather. He has not really outgrown a relationship of dependency on Scrooge but it is limited mainly to finance with an occasional meeting.

The death of his father had sent Mr Timothy in his mourning clothes from the funeral to a life in the slums. He has a rented room in a house of ill repute and works at night with his friend, the retired sailor Gully, scavenging from a row boat on the Thames for dead bodies. This seems a very Dickensian pursuit and, indeed, the whole book reflects the grotesqueries of Dickensian London, from the bizarre characters to the richness of the language. Louis Bayard doesn't copy Dickens' clotted prose but he produces very clear images with a brutal edge to the language. This cuts to the heart of the vicious Victorian underworld in which Timothy lives.

Timothy and Gully with two immature companions become embroiled in a frightening adventure revealing more of the underbelly of 19th century London than Dickens himself did. Colin the Melodious is Tim's 11-year-old assistant who has not only the singing skill indicated by his name, but also the streetwise persona that Tim lacks.

They work to approach and then to help a wild young foreign girl called Philomena who is threatened by the machinations of the unknown villains of the tale. The bodies of two young girls have been seen by Timothy each with a brand on her shoulder and when he finds a living girl with the same mark he is very concerned.

The thrilling rollercoaster ride that ensues as he investigates leaves the reader holding his or her breath as excitement piles on excitement and fears for such appealing characters grow stronger.

The portrait of London as dirty, effervescent, dangerous and disorderly evokes the smells particularly well. The story is well written with the clues very carefully scattered and disguised so that when Tim realises their significance you feel the same sense of things clicking into place. The full picture is revealed tantalisingly slowly and reaching a height of depravity hard to accept. The whole tale ends satisfyingly with all the strange incoherent happenings slotted into the puzzle.

Reviewed by Jennifer S. Palmer, February 2005

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]