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I completely admit to being one of those people that's easily seduced by a beautiful and suggestive cover, and this cover is right up my alley.
Mayhem started out quite strong - interestingly enough, rather than another tired retelling of a Jack the Ripper story, Pinborough instead goes after the Thames Torso Murders which happened at the same time as Jack the Ripper but was overlooked because of the frenzy that surrounded the aforementioned serial killer. Employing changing narrators between the chapters, between differing central characters - including the killer himself - the book is quite evocative and does a great job in capturing the feeling of the time period and era, from the proper Victorian parlors to the seedy opium dens.
However, I think as the book continues on and the culprit is slowly revealed I think the book loses some of its steam and 'sexiness', somewhat, and I found myself just speed reading to the end, which was disappointing considering how well the novel started out. I'm not sure if this is partially my own shortcoming since I had just binge read through another 7 books in 6 days before this, but I really did feel like the tale fizzled out for me.
Despite that, however, I do think this is one of the stronger stories for me to take place in this time period. One that comes to mind as being far less successful is Dan Simmons' overly verbose [b:Drood|3222979|Drood|Dan Simmons|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1344270075s/3222979.jpg|3257056], which I thought was a fantastic idea that wasn't really well actualized. Would recommend for fans of novels set in this era.
Mayhem started out quite strong - interestingly enough, rather than another tired retelling of a Jack the Ripper story, Pinborough instead goes after the Thames Torso Murders which happened at the same time as Jack the Ripper but was overlooked because of the frenzy that surrounded the aforementioned serial killer. Employing changing narrators between the chapters, between differing central characters - including the killer himself - the book is quite evocative and does a great job in capturing the feeling of the time period and era, from the proper Victorian parlors to the seedy opium dens.
However, I think as the book continues on and the culprit is slowly revealed I think the book loses some of its steam and 'sexiness', somewhat, and I found myself just speed reading to the end, which was disappointing considering how well the novel started out. I'm not sure if this is partially my own shortcoming since I had just binge read through another 7 books in 6 days before this, but I really did feel like the tale fizzled out for me.
Despite that, however, I do think this is one of the stronger stories for me to take place in this time period. One that comes to mind as being far less successful is Dan Simmons' overly verbose [b:Drood|3222979|Drood|Dan Simmons|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1344270075s/3222979.jpg|3257056], which I thought was a fantastic idea that wasn't really well actualized. Would recommend for fans of novels set in this era.