I'll start with the fact the extract and the cover had me looking forward to this, but by the time i had finished i felt a little let down. IUt had all the promise of being a dark and suspenseful novel, but in the end it didn't have as much depth to it as i had hoped, you can see things coming a mile off, there were no big twists, and even the payoff at the end was a bit twee.
Being Scottish i am always intrigued by books set in my own country, and although i recognised some street names there wasn't a great deal more than that, it could have been set anywhere.
The story centres around the pharmacist husband's discovery of Heroin, and using his own wife and one of her friends as his unsuspecting guinea pigs, watching them get hooked and then noting the results so he could present them at the Royal Society. There is a very Dickensian sidekick for the husband with the name of Badcock who happens to be a bit of a pervert trying it on with the maids against their will. There is a brief interlude to brothel of sorts where the wife discovers her husbands fetish side which leads to her deciding she needs to rid herself of both him and her dependence on his medicines, so she takes herself off to a croft to detox.
It could have gotten a lot darker with regards to the effects of addiction and the cold turkey method of detoxing off it, but she conveniently has a few days/weeks living in this croft helping with the housework feeling a little unwell then suddenly she's back to normal and ready to get her revenge. My biggest disappointment was how easily her revenge was taken by her husband who didn't try anything to get his own back on her, but instead seemed to just disappear into a depression and consumes all of his remaining supply of the Heroin before reappearing destitute and broken.
It was well enough written to make it an easy read, but nothing groundbreaking or intriguing with no real twists to speak of.
Being Scottish i am always intrigued by books set in my own country, and although i recognised some street names there wasn't a great deal more than that, it could have been set anywhere.
The story centres around the pharmacist husband's discovery of Heroin, and using his own wife and one of her friends as his unsuspecting guinea pigs, watching them get hooked and then noting the results so he could present them at the Royal Society. There is a very Dickensian sidekick for the husband with the name of Badcock who happens to be a bit of a pervert trying it on with the maids against their will. There is a brief interlude to brothel of sorts where the wife discovers her husbands fetish side which leads to her deciding she needs to rid herself of both him and her dependence on his medicines, so she takes herself off to a croft to detox.
It could have gotten a lot darker with regards to the effects of addiction and the cold turkey method of detoxing off it, but she conveniently has a few days/weeks living in this croft helping with the housework feeling a little unwell then suddenly she's back to normal and ready to get her revenge. My biggest disappointment was how easily her revenge was taken by her husband who didn't try anything to get his own back on her, but instead seemed to just disappear into a depression and consumes all of his remaining supply of the Heroin before reappearing destitute and broken.
It was well enough written to make it an easy read, but nothing groundbreaking or intriguing with no real twists to speak of.