A shadow on the lens
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I received an ARC of this book from TBC/net galley in exchange for a review.
The year is 1904 and Thomas Bexley is the world’s first forensic photographer. His expertise is called upon when a young girl, Bestand Tilny, is brutally murdered and her remains are staged in a chilling way. It is up to Bexley to document the grizzly murder and ensure justice can be served.
I was initially excited to get started on this book. The premise of the first CSI was interesting and fascinating. However, as the plot dragged on, mainly concentrating on how ill our poor protagonist feels, I lost utter interest. The author escapes many of the more technical details by reassuring the reader “he won’t bore us with the detail” and we are back to poor Thomas feeling sick. The book is written in form of a diary, so entirely told from the main character’s perspective.
I honestly I did not manage to find a single likeable character.
I did like the scene settings, the descriptions of the village, the woods and church. The plot itself is imaginative, with interesting elements of crime, horror and the supernatural but, for me, the tedious description of poor Thomas’s inflictions took away a lot from the overall story.
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