2.5

I have to confess: it is so easy "to buy" me with a good cover.
And that is what happened.

Pseudo-Victorian detective story with mysterious touch and supernatural features? Sounds nice. But it is much more "pseudo" that Victorian, and through my reading I could not understand if there is any problem with me, or with the characters of the book. Indeed, scenery in it has a resemblance with somewhat 19th century, with horses, carriages and trains. But apart from that this "pseudo" won over the book. Characters are taken from modern time talk-shows with their exhibitionistic behavior: main character of the story, inspector Frey, does indeed know that navy is an impossible color for formal evening suit, but his manners end with that knowledge: gentleman? Not him: it doesn't matter what one thinks about Scotland or another person's look, it is the fact that he finds it possible to speak of his ill opinions to everyone concerned. Same goes almost for every detail of his image, and yes, he is not the only one. Almost every character in the novel left me with a question: wait, is that novel about London's outskirts (which is quite funny because somehow Mr. Frey thinks favorably on Whitechapel comparing to Edinburgh), factory workers, or gangs? Either I missed a major part of the plot, or author took yellow press scandal and transferred it to the pages with Victorian surroundings.

The language, though much richer than in several best-selling novels of our time, is nice, but to make it sound like 19th century and Scottish accent author goes to continuous repetitions of the same words and phrases, so that in the middle of the book I began to wonder, why characters' vocabulary is so limited?

But despite all that, it was interesting reading. The end left me a bit disappointed with rather obvious answers, but I enjoyed the novel. It indeed has very promising points, like gypsy's line and potential in McGray case. This is a debut work, so I think that in future it will eventually become better - at least I hope so