Name: Watchers of the Dead
ISBN: 9780727888914

Simon Beaufort

December 1882. Reporter Alec Lonsdale is shocked to discover a body hacked to death in the basement of a new museum. Suspicion immediately falls on a trio of cannibals, brought over as museum exhibits, who have disappeared without trace. But then he discovers a letter in the victim's home warning of a catastrophic event planned for Christmas Eve...

Watchers of the Dead

Pam Sartain

Watchers of the Dead by Simon Beaufort is set in London, 1882, with the Natural History Museum only recently opened! There are cannibals and dinosaur bones. Yes, three people from Africa are going to be on show, except they've gone missing. 

Alec Lonsdale, a reporter for Pall Mall Gazette stumbles on the body in the basement of the Natural History Museum when hunting for the cannibals! This leads him to discover there's been some other murders, and the cannibals are the police's chief suspects!

I found Watchers of the Dead to be full of people from the time, which is really interesting from a historical perspective, but I feel the story fell a bit flat, with quite a lot going on that got a little muddled, and then what felt like big character moments being dealt with in one line.

Crime books are one of my favourite genres, and I read them for different reasons. Cosy crime (which I'm afraid I would lump Golden Age crime in to) is my midnight read, historical for a bit of a history lesson, crime thriller are ones not to read at bedtime because you'll be sucked in to the action.

When I think of historical crime, I think of C.J Sansom (Matthew Shardlake), Lindsey Davis (Falco), and Ellis Peters (Cadfael), and I'm afraid Watchers of the Dead didn't quite measure up to these!

Watchers of the Dead was published on 1st July 2019, and is available to buy on Amazon and on Waterstones. I've found a link to where you can search for local bookshops, including independent!

Simon Beaufort is two people! Susanna Gregory and Beau Riffenburgh, who write together under the name Simon Beaufort. 

You can follow Susanna Gregory on her website, and you can follow Beau Riffenburgh on this page.

If you're interested in historical crime book, then here's some others I've reviewed:

Season of Darkness by Cora Harrison 🌟🌟🌟

The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins 🌟🌟🌟🌟

The Wolf and the Watchman by Niklas Natt och Dag 🌟🌟🌟🌟

I was given this book for free in return for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and to Severn House (the publishers) for this book.

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