Customer Reviews

The Minutes of the Lazarus Club

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In London in the 1850s, a secret society called the Lazarus club emerges, comprised of the most brilliant scientific minds of the age. Their goal is to discuss various problems and mysteries that arise out of their scientific explorations. In 1857, Dr. George Phillips is invited to join the club, by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who has just completed work on a massive ship, the Great Eastern. Pretty soon, however, dead prostitutes are washed onto the shores of the Thames, their insides removed, and Phillips is immediately suspected of the crime. The attempt to clear his name leads to a chase of a killer and a crime that could have international implications.

For the most part, I enjoyed this novel. Aside from a brief spell in the middle, which seemed to drag a bit, the plot moved at a rapid pace, and Pollard does a great job of bringing mid-19th century London to life. I talk a lot about novels where the cities described in them become characters themselves, and London here is no exception. You almost feel as though you're wandering the dark, foggy streets of 1850s London with Phillips and Brunel. The plot is somewhat macabre, but the ending of this highly suspenseful novel had me glued to my seat. I also liked the brief appearances that Florence Nightingale made in this book.

There were only two other things I didn't particularly care for: Phillips practically had to be handed the answer to the mystery, and the villain kept coming back to life in true bad-thriller fashion. But other than that, I really enjoyed this novel.

Reading the plot summary immediately caught my interest in this book that would relate about 'enigmatic machinations', 'mysterious plans' and 'mutilated bodies'. And indeed, the first few chapters were a good read and I got plenty of all that (though the mutilated bodies, for all the attention they get in the summary, only play a very minor role in the story).
However, gradually the plot became more and more contrived and the actions of our dear Dr Phillips less and less understandable. This should not have been a major problem, since reading this kind of mystery/conspiracy novel depends on a suspension of disbelieve on the reader's part. In this case, however, Mr Pollard made it virtually impossible for the reader to do just that. Time and again, when our hero does something not quite sensible, Mr Pollard lets him explain exactly how and why that action is, in some strange way, very logical and sensible indeed (or worse, he lets Dr Phillips make excuses about why he is doing this or that).
This has quite an opposite effect, since now all the illogical actions are clearly pointed out to us. It's like watching a horror movie in which the teenage protagonists go into the dark forest (or lonely house, or deserted road or whatever), all the while explaining to the camera why it's really very sensible of them to do that! It's not wrong for characters in these kind of stories to do thinks that are, well, quite stupid. As an audience, we kind of expect it. But don't apologize for it, because that's a sure way to dispell the magic.

So, although there is quite a lot to enjoy in this novel (not the least the inventive use of historical character), the story, for me, just doesn't work...