Undiscovered Scotland

 

"The Silent House of Sleep" by Allan Gaw is an outstanding whodunit with a difference. Lots of differences, in fact, which results in a compelling and memorable tale. What you find between the covers is a beautifully paced account of the forensic examination of the victims of a double murder by Scottish pathologist Dr Jack Cuthbert, whose sometimes fractious relationship with the man leading the police investigation, Scotland Yard's Detective Chief Inspector Mowbray, lies at the heart to the book.

The bodies are found in a shallow grave in a London park in February 1929 in truly gruesome circumstances. As Cuthbert begins the painstaking task of unravelling what the murderer has left, he begins to realise that he is dealing with something remarkable. Sometimes you read a book and think it's perfectly suited to being made into a film. That might be more problematic in this case, as much of the investigation revolves around the literal disentangling of two bodies in different but very advanced states of decomposition. The author has worked as a pathologist and it's fascinating to know that his descriptions of what Cuthbert is doing and why are as real as it gets, albeit wound back nearly a century to reflect the state of medical science as it was at the time.

The central character, Dr Jack Cuthbert, is a memorable figure and a broken man. Tall, cultured, brilliant and universally admired, he lives behind a facade he has built to conceal aspects of himself that have always been there; and others he acquired while serving on the Western Front in 1914/1915 before returning to Edinburgh to complete medical studies that had been interrupted when he enlisted. The plot moves back and forth between London in 1929 and Edinburgh and the Western Front fifteen years earlier. The result is a complex and enthralling portrait of a deeply disturbed and utterly lonely man.

At the end of the book we are promised three more novels by Allan Gaw featuring Dr Jack Cuthbert that are to be published at intervals of just a few months. On the evidence of "The Silent House of Sleep" these are well worth looking forward to!