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rynflynn12's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
bizzerg's review
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
girl_of_books_and_wheels's review against another edition
4.0
Took a while to get in to, but an interesting read none the less,
msjayteerattray's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
kellyvandamme's review
4.0
Hyde introduces us to Robert Louis Stevenson, a frail, gaunt man talking to his robust friend Edward Hyde about a book he is trying to write. He knows exactly what he wants to write but the words to do so elude him and it’s consuming him. When he tells Hyde that he wants to write about the duality of human nature, the good within the bad and vice versa, and the coexistence of good and evil in one person, Hyde tells him he has a tale about just that…
A story within a story: Edward Hyde’s tale takes us back in time two years. Superintendent of detective officers in Edinburgh’s City Police, Captain Hyde has just found a man thrice murdered: hanged, ripped and drowned, but he has no recollection of why he was at the scene in the first place, which is rather troubling, as is the terror of the young Highland girl there with him and her talk of banshees.
According to Hyde’s friend and physician Dr Porteous, Hyde has a form of epilepsy. But what a strange form it is: absences from reality, hallucinations, nocturnal seizures. Hyde is not sure that’s all it is, and he’s starting to suspect his medicine makes him worse instead of better. Of course the reader is equally unsure. Are we to trust Hyde, or is he the unreliable narrator the legend would have us believe? I have to admit I kept asking myself that same question over and over again, I just couldn’t be sure.
After tackling the legend of Jack the Ripper in The Devil Aspect, Craig Russell now takes the tale of Jekyll and Hyde and makes it entirely his own. The result is respectful of tradition, yet refreshing. I went in expecting a dark, Gothic tale, atmospheric and disturbing, and that was exactly what I got. Between Hyde himself and other mysterious, somewhat off characters, Hyde has the kind of dark vibe that I adore, keeping me wary of almost every single character throughout.
Small details give Hyde an air of authenticity and the reader a sense of the era: the mention of electrification in the streets of Edinburgh, the intricacies of post-mortem investigation, how stomach content is already examined but blood testing is still a new, limited and largely mistrusted part of an autopsy, and the (male) mistrust of a female physician (Dr Callie Burr is a brilliant character though!). Other story elements refer to Scottish legends and folklore, rituals, Celtic mythology. The combination is an interesting one, intelligent and intriguing.
Hyde utterly fascinated me, drawing me into its dark, mesmerising depths where historic and occult crime fiction meet. Recommended.
A story within a story: Edward Hyde’s tale takes us back in time two years. Superintendent of detective officers in Edinburgh’s City Police, Captain Hyde has just found a man thrice murdered: hanged, ripped and drowned, but he has no recollection of why he was at the scene in the first place, which is rather troubling, as is the terror of the young Highland girl there with him and her talk of banshees.
According to Hyde’s friend and physician Dr Porteous, Hyde has a form of epilepsy. But what a strange form it is: absences from reality, hallucinations, nocturnal seizures. Hyde is not sure that’s all it is, and he’s starting to suspect his medicine makes him worse instead of better. Of course the reader is equally unsure. Are we to trust Hyde, or is he the unreliable narrator the legend would have us believe? I have to admit I kept asking myself that same question over and over again, I just couldn’t be sure.
After tackling the legend of Jack the Ripper in The Devil Aspect, Craig Russell now takes the tale of Jekyll and Hyde and makes it entirely his own. The result is respectful of tradition, yet refreshing. I went in expecting a dark, Gothic tale, atmospheric and disturbing, and that was exactly what I got. Between Hyde himself and other mysterious, somewhat off characters, Hyde has the kind of dark vibe that I adore, keeping me wary of almost every single character throughout.
Small details give Hyde an air of authenticity and the reader a sense of the era: the mention of electrification in the streets of Edinburgh, the intricacies of post-mortem investigation, how stomach content is already examined but blood testing is still a new, limited and largely mistrusted part of an autopsy, and the (male) mistrust of a female physician (Dr Callie Burr is a brilliant character though!). Other story elements refer to Scottish legends and folklore, rituals, Celtic mythology. The combination is an interesting one, intelligent and intriguing.
Hyde utterly fascinated me, drawing me into its dark, mesmerising depths where historic and occult crime fiction meet. Recommended.
mhmrose's review against another edition
5.0
Victorian Edinburgh. Captain Edward Henry Hyde is chief detective for the City of Edinburgh Police; as such, he is responsible for investigating all murders and serious crimes in the city. Hyde is a striking but severe-looking man who provokes unease, and often fear, in those who encounter him. Nevertheless, Edward Hyde is truly a good man . . . though he wrestles fiercely with his own unique demons.
When Hyde finds himself at the scene of a heinous murder, with no idea of how he got there or the events leading up to the discovery, his alarm is triggered on two levels. First, the crime scene is brutal and involves the Threefold Death, an ancient Celtic rite of sacrifice entangled with dark Scottish spiritual mythology. Second, Hyde's inability to remember any detail of his arrival at the crime scene makes him immediately fret about the secret he keeps from all but his physician: he suffers from a rare form of epilepsy that causes him to lose time--amnesiac absences where he cannot account for his actions--and nocturnal seizures that manifest themselves as vivid and lucid dreams. As Hyde begins his investigation of the murder in a city on edge, he finds himself not only searching for real world clues, but trying to unravel the significance of the imagery in the otherworld of his dreaming. His investigation leads to the very places he fears, but has never fully imagined.
~~~
Delving into the suspicious murder of a Hanged Man in Dean Village with his heart cut out, the mysticism of Old Celtic mythology soon overtakes an already mysterious death, causing Captain Edward Hyde to question all those around him and even his own sanity.
Being named Hyde, the implication of this novel being a simple retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson's famous The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is palpable, but it couldn't be further from the truth. Craig Russell has created an immersive, heart-thumping thriller delving into the duality of the human mind; the logical and the imaginative sides, but also the duality of the world; the one we live in and the myth of an old Gaelic world, the "Otherworld".
Captain Edward Hyde is a fascinating protagonist; a soldier turned chief detective of Scotland's capital who suffers from loss of time and only has his physician, and friend, Samuel Porteous' explanation of epilepsy to understand why he is that way. An open-minded man in a time where change may be overtaking morality is still stagnant.
The mystery of the Deacon of the Dark Guild, as well as members of the Guild, is interesting twists and turns that lead to a twist that I never saw and thoroughly enjoyed.
The multiple protagonists of certain chapters create an immersive atmosphere that makes the novel feel fuller but also shows Edinburgh as a place full of individuals that live very different lives and can easily be brought together by circumstance or belief. Hyde is one of the best page-turning historic crime novels I have read this year, which refused to let me put it down until I knew every detail behind every character, every Gaelic word and every setting in and around Victorian Edinburgh.
When Hyde finds himself at the scene of a heinous murder, with no idea of how he got there or the events leading up to the discovery, his alarm is triggered on two levels. First, the crime scene is brutal and involves the Threefold Death, an ancient Celtic rite of sacrifice entangled with dark Scottish spiritual mythology. Second, Hyde's inability to remember any detail of his arrival at the crime scene makes him immediately fret about the secret he keeps from all but his physician: he suffers from a rare form of epilepsy that causes him to lose time--amnesiac absences where he cannot account for his actions--and nocturnal seizures that manifest themselves as vivid and lucid dreams. As Hyde begins his investigation of the murder in a city on edge, he finds himself not only searching for real world clues, but trying to unravel the significance of the imagery in the otherworld of his dreaming. His investigation leads to the very places he fears, but has never fully imagined.
~~~
Delving into the suspicious murder of a Hanged Man in Dean Village with his heart cut out, the mysticism of Old Celtic mythology soon overtakes an already mysterious death, causing Captain Edward Hyde to question all those around him and even his own sanity.
Being named Hyde, the implication of this novel being a simple retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson's famous The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is palpable, but it couldn't be further from the truth. Craig Russell has created an immersive, heart-thumping thriller delving into the duality of the human mind; the logical and the imaginative sides, but also the duality of the world; the one we live in and the myth of an old Gaelic world, the "Otherworld".
Captain Edward Hyde is a fascinating protagonist; a soldier turned chief detective of Scotland's capital who suffers from loss of time and only has his physician, and friend, Samuel Porteous' explanation of epilepsy to understand why he is that way. An open-minded man in a time where change may be overtaking morality is still stagnant.
The mystery of the Deacon of the Dark Guild, as well as members of the Guild, is interesting twists and turns that lead to a twist that I never saw and thoroughly enjoyed.
The multiple protagonists of certain chapters create an immersive atmosphere that makes the novel feel fuller but also shows Edinburgh as a place full of individuals that live very different lives and can easily be brought together by circumstance or belief. Hyde is one of the best page-turning historic crime novels I have read this year, which refused to let me put it down until I knew every detail behind every character, every Gaelic word and every setting in and around Victorian Edinburgh.
pilebythebed's review
4.0
Craig Russell is intent on exploring the idea of split personalities, or what might make otherwise good people do bad things. In his last novel, The Devil Aspect, set in a European asylum on the eve of World War II, the question was whether it was the devil, or some other malevolent spirit that possessed people and caused them to commit horrific crimes. Given this background, it is no surprise that Russell was drawn to the famous Robert Louis Stevenson story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In Hyde he manages to riff on that story to deliver a kind of gothic procedural, although one that explores these same issues.
The book opens on a burly Edward Hyde sitting by the ocean with his good friend Stevenson. They are discussing the possibility of split personalities, of a good and evil side to a person that may be unaware of each other. This leads Hyde to tell Stevenson the story that makes up the majority of this book. Edward Hyde, it turns out, is the chief detective in the Edinburgh police force. He is suffering from a mental condition that causes him to have strange visions and to lose time, a condition that he has not revealed to his superiors. After one of these episodes he finds himself in the town of Dean where he is led to the discovery of a hanging body that has been killed “three times”. This is the first of a series of murders and disappearances that are connected to Celtic mythology and Scottish nationalism and will have Hyde questioning his own sanity.
As with The Devil Aspect, Russell effectively deploys his creepy, gothic styling on the story. The ancient city of Edinburgh during the later years of the industrial revolution makes a perfect setting for this type of tale. Locations are dark and candlelit, there is significant poverty and destitution and new development butts up against ancient ritual. Into this mix, Russell drops dark elements of Celtic mythology, stories of devil hounds, doll coffins, a Dark Guild, hanging trees and mysterious standing stones. And on top of this he layers readers’ likely understanding of the basic story of Jekyll and Hyde – of a man who is in fact two men, one peaceful one violent, who have no knowledge of each other, struggling for control of the same body. But this knowledge is also used against the reader to an extent, managing their understanding of the protagonist and potentially diverting their attention away from other clues.
Overall, Hyde is an effective reinvention and explanation of a classic tale for modern times. But it also allows Russell to once again explore a horror trope that he is clearly interested in. Russell pitches this as the inspiration for the classic tale but the only really connection to that tale, the character of Edward Hyde, is a bit of a bluff. Referential bookends aside, with Hyde Russell has produced a strong, twisty, gothic, standalone historical police procedural with a conflicted protagonist and a strong sense of place that is well worth reading on its own merits.
The book opens on a burly Edward Hyde sitting by the ocean with his good friend Stevenson. They are discussing the possibility of split personalities, of a good and evil side to a person that may be unaware of each other. This leads Hyde to tell Stevenson the story that makes up the majority of this book. Edward Hyde, it turns out, is the chief detective in the Edinburgh police force. He is suffering from a mental condition that causes him to have strange visions and to lose time, a condition that he has not revealed to his superiors. After one of these episodes he finds himself in the town of Dean where he is led to the discovery of a hanging body that has been killed “three times”. This is the first of a series of murders and disappearances that are connected to Celtic mythology and Scottish nationalism and will have Hyde questioning his own sanity.
As with The Devil Aspect, Russell effectively deploys his creepy, gothic styling on the story. The ancient city of Edinburgh during the later years of the industrial revolution makes a perfect setting for this type of tale. Locations are dark and candlelit, there is significant poverty and destitution and new development butts up against ancient ritual. Into this mix, Russell drops dark elements of Celtic mythology, stories of devil hounds, doll coffins, a Dark Guild, hanging trees and mysterious standing stones. And on top of this he layers readers’ likely understanding of the basic story of Jekyll and Hyde – of a man who is in fact two men, one peaceful one violent, who have no knowledge of each other, struggling for control of the same body. But this knowledge is also used against the reader to an extent, managing their understanding of the protagonist and potentially diverting their attention away from other clues.
Overall, Hyde is an effective reinvention and explanation of a classic tale for modern times. But it also allows Russell to once again explore a horror trope that he is clearly interested in. Russell pitches this as the inspiration for the classic tale but the only really connection to that tale, the character of Edward Hyde, is a bit of a bluff. Referential bookends aside, with Hyde Russell has produced a strong, twisty, gothic, standalone historical police procedural with a conflicted protagonist and a strong sense of place that is well worth reading on its own merits.
seraphljfh's review
4.0
Really interesting take on this tale with lots of literary name drops. A good story