The Blood, by E.S. Thomson, sees the return of apothecary Jem Flockhart and architect Will Quartermain for their third mystery. This time, the pair keep stumbling across bodies as Jem tries to figure out what happened to her friend, an apothecary on a floating hospital, a decommissioned navel vessel called The Blood, now permanently docked in the Thames. The case sends Jem and her fiend Will deep into the world of the medical experiments and the lives of former sex workers in mid-1800s, low class London.
Jem, for those who aren’t familiar with this series, is a woman who has lived her entire life as a man. Women were not allowed to be apothecaries. (At the time, women weren’t allowed to do much of anything.) She has her own apothecary shop and an apprentice to help with the boring bits. Jem seems like she’s enjoying a bit of quiet when she receives a disturbing note from her old friend, Aberlady, the apothecary on duty aboard The Blood. The note took a week to get to Jem and it doesn’t take long for her to learn that it is much too late to save Aberlady. Bodies start appearing before Aberlady reappears and meets his own death.
For most of the book, Jem and Will fail to make traction in the case. So many of the witnesses won’t talk or only give up chickenfeed after extorting money out of the duo. One witness is sinking into dementia. On top of all this, Jem has taken on Aberlady’s duties and Will is busy working on a demolition of a warehouse near The Blood (where they find even more bodies). The clues refuse to come together, at least until near the end of the book when emotions run so high that something has to give. When that happens, all hell breaks us.
I enjoy these books for Jem’s unique perspective as a woman in disguise in a highly sexist society. The Blood, like the other books in the series, are very good at showing us the strange in-between place that Jem in habits. She lives among men. She’s spent her entire life pretending to be a man and doing nothing to raise their suspicious. Interestingly, she’s picked up a bit of casual sexism herself. She has more than one run in with the fierce Miss Proudlove, a wonderful character for more reasons than I can go into here. These run ins set Jem back on her heels, reminding her of her obligations to her gender and to people who are told they can’t be something because they’re not a white male of the right class.
Readers who are interested in The Blood should read the first two books in the series, Beloved Poison and Dark Asylum. Jem and Will are still dealing with emotional baggage from those outings; The Blood doesn’t waste time recounting what happened apart from a few references.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration. It will be released 4 December 2018.