Hyde

Starred review from November 8, 2021
Russell (The Devil Aspect) imagines what inspired Robert Louis Stevenson in this creative take on a classic work of Victorian horror fiction. Capt. Edward Hyde, “superintendent of detective officers in Edinburgh’s City Police,” is discomfited by blackout episodes, which may be the result of epileptic fits. His memory losses become even more troubling when one coincides with a brutal murder he stumbles on—a male victim hanging from a riverbank tree, his throat slit, and his head immersed in the flowing water. Hyde realizes the setup mimics the Threefold Death, “an ancient Celtic ritual of human sacrifice.” His suspicions that he may have been responsible complicate the inquiry, as do his doubts about the medication he’s been prescribed by a physician friend, which he thinks may be making his condition worse. Further murders, the disappearance of a prominent businessman’s adult daughter, Special Branch concerns about Scottish insurrectionists, and rumors of a cult known as the Dark Guild add up to an intricate but not overly busy story line. Evocative prose (“violence hung like mine dust in the air, waiting for a spark to bring it to combustion”) enhances a suspenseful and sophisticated plot. This is the rare riff on an influential novel that sticks the landing.