The Silent House of Sleep: A Dr. Jack Cuthbert Mystery

Police surgeon Jack Cuthbert investigates a bizarre double murder in 1920s London in the brilliant first novel from former pathologist Gaw (Trial by Fire: Lessons from the History of Clinical Trials). Cuthbert is called in when a man walking his Labrador spots a bloated hand sticking out of the ground. As Cuthbert excavates the corpse, both he and the police are stunned to find that the body has been placed on top of a second one. The faces of both victims are mangled beyond recognition and there are signs they were tied up before they died. During the autopsy, the state of the corpses reminds Cuthbert of a grisly passage from the Aeneid (“The living and the dead at his command / Were coupled, face to face, and hand to hand”), and he offers Scotland Yard his help cracking the case. Flashbacks to Cuthbert’s medical school days and his unrequited infatuation with a male colleague, along with his horrific experiences in the trenches of WWI, deepen the characterization, and Gaw wallops readers with a shocking yet credible twist long after the mystery seems resolved. Fans of Rennie Airth’s moody historical mysteries will love this. Agent: Fiona Brownlee, Brownlee Donald Assoc. (May)