Name: The Yard
ISBN: 9780399149542

Alex Grecian

Suffering public contempt after the Metropolitan Police's failure to capture Jack the Ripper, Walter Day, a member of Victorian London's recently formed "Murder Squad," partners with Scotland Yard's first forensic pathologist to track down a killer who is targeting their colleagues.

The Yard

A year after Jack the Ripper claimed his last victim, Victorian London is in the grip of a wave of crime and murder, with its citizens no longer able to trust the police to protect them. The newly formed Murder Squad of Scotland Yard, made up of just twelve detectives, battles in vain against the tide of violence and cruelty. When the body of a Yard detective is found in a suitcase, his lips sewn together and his eyes sewn shut, it becomes clear that not even the police are safe from attack. Has the Ripper returned - or is a new killer at large? Walter Day, the squad's newest recruit, is assigned the case and finds a strange ally in the Yard's first forensic pathologist, Dr Bernard Kingsley. Kingsley, a pioneer of groundbreaking forensic science, is convinced that strange new techniques such as finger printing are the key to finding the person responsible. With Kingsley's help, will Day find the murderer before it's too late? Or are the police once again helpless to stop a serial killer whose brutality knows no limits?

Scotland Yard Murder Squad

Colleen

4 Stars

I picked up The Yard because a friend wanted to buddy read it. I admit that at first I thought it sounded generic – like just another Sherlock Holmes wannabe. But The Yard had plenty going for it, and I enjoyed reading it.
 
The story is set in London 1889. The city is still reeling from Jack the Ripper, and there is a lot of hostility and mistrust towards the police for their failure to catch him. Everything is thrown into chaos when someone starts killing Scotland Yard detectives.
 
This is less of a mystery and more of a cat-and-mouse chase to catch the killer. The reader is told early on who the killer is although details of the how and why are revealed slowly. I generally enjoy the stimuli of solving a whodunit, but The Yard was still interesting and engaging. By the end, I felt invested in the characters and easily sped through the second half of the book.
 
The main problem was that it was hard to keep track of who was who at the start of the story. The narrative jumps right into the scenes without any background info. There isn’t any particular main character. Instead, the story switches focus between several different people, none of whom are properly introduced. Once I figured out who everyone was and how they fit together, I enjoyed the story much more. But all of that confusion at the start of the story made it hard to enjoy at first.
 
In addition to jumping between numerous characters, there were also flashbacks for some characters. While the flashbacks did build some background information, they were mostly just added confusion by muddying the timeline. Overall, I didn’t feel that the information provided in the flashbacks was crucial enough to warrant needing flashbacks at all. Thankfully there weren’t too many flashbacks.
 
The main case involved the cop killer, but there were also secondary mysteries intertwined in the story. Between the multiple plot lines and numerous characters, the story was too spread out at times which also added to the initial confusion. But as I mentioned, I did become very interested in the story as it progressed.
 
There were a lot of elements in The Yard that reminded me of The Alienist. They are both crime procedural that revolve around dealing with early serial killers. They are set in the same decade although The Alienist takes place in New York. They also both borrow from more modern crime solving techniques. I did prefer The Yard though, because it did not get bogged down by filler details the way The Alienist did.
 
The Yard was mostly historically accurate, but it does stretch things a bit. There were some things that were discovered by the time the story takes place (such as fingerprinting and the cause and treatment of tetanus) but that weren’t widely known or acknowledged. Although fingerprinting as a criminal investigative technique was around, Scotland Yard didn’t implement their Fingerprint Branch until 1901. (Fun fact: did you know Argentina was the first country to have a criminal fingerprint database?) So they might not have been outright anachronisms, but they aren’t truly historically accurate either. The story also explores the implementation of more modern investigative techniques such as evidence logging, use of interview rooms to interrogate suspects, full postmortem examinations, working in partners, etc. It should all be taken with a grain of salt.
 
Despite a slippery start, I enjoyed The Yard. It was fast-paced and engaging. I’ll probably continue with the series at some point although probably not immediately. I would recommend this to people who like crime procedural with a historical setting.
 
 
RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 4 Stars
Writing Style: 3 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 4 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 4 Stars
Level of Captivation: 4 Stars
Originality: 3 Stars

Chris Aldrich

The book was alright and read at a reasonable pace. At first it seemed like there were a few too many main characters. There were certainly far too many points of view which could have been better done by an omniscient single one.

A few things seemed a bit too deus-ex-machina, and in particular the number of unfortunate circumstances which happened to Hammersmith. The characters were at least reasonably drawn out and delineated. The setting was a bit lacking to the point that I feel like I'd have to call out some serious historical flaws, but the research to ensure accuracy just isn't worth the effort. If the author did significant research to make sure the world was real, he didn't do that research justice within the final presentation.

The police procedural portions were generally okay, except the overwrought feeling given by trying to explain simple procedures like fingerprinting within a narrative in which they're new, but to an audience in which they're all too mundane. For this type of historical-type of fiction I far preferred Caleb Carr's The Alienist, which was far better done from both a plot and a character standpoint.