Review: The Death of Shame, by Ambrose Parry

Description

When you are a prisoner of your secrets, the death of shame is the only path to liberty.

Annabel Banks was promised work as a maid with a prestigious Edinburgh
family. But on her first day, she’s nowhere to be found. Concerned relatives
contact Sarah Fisher to help. Sarah might know her way around the city – its
light sides and dark – but soon she’ll discover the plight of dozens of girls
ensnared in its many brothels: lured, abused and left ruined in the eyes of the world.

Meanwhile, a prominent society figure throws himself from the Scott
Monument. Will Raven is asked to establish whether the death was suicide
or if someone else was involved.

Drawing upon real historical events, The Death of Shame takes the Raven and Fisher series into a treacherous labyrinth of shame and the pitfalls of a culture obsessed with moral purity.

My Review

Thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising this tour and to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book.

I reviewed a previous entry in this series, Voices of the Dead, back in 2023. Not my best review, looking back at it, I summarised events and made some comments about medical quackery, so I’m going to do better with this one, and actually discuss the writing style and description, etc.

In this final Raven and Fisher Mystery, Will Raven is called to a suicide that will turn his marriage upside down, while Sarah Fisher meets her sister-in-law and is asked to find Annabel, technically Sarah’s niece. I haven’t read the first three books, but the information provided in this book tells me that Sarah Fisher married a doctor who died. His brother married and had a daughter. Then he died. Sarah met them all six years before the present of the book, but has mostly forgotten everyone but her husband Archie. Annabel is missing after arriving in Edinburgh to take up a position as a nurse maid.

Why did the suicide happen? and where is Annabel? seem like completely separate cases, until Will’s long-missing uncle comes into the picture. Turns out he wasn’t dead but transported to Australia, and now he’s back in Edinburgh and something of an entrepreneur and criminal kingpin. There’s blackmail, murder, illicit photographs, and forced prostitution. How will Will and Sarah get to the bottom of it all, rescue Annabel and break the hold Magnus Cunningham has on the city?

The writing brings Victorian Edinburgh to life, with it’s rowdy students, deep poverty in the Old Town and extreme wealth in the New Town, and explores the snobbery and hypocrisy of Victorian mores.

The authors draw on their knowledge of history and medicine to recreate Edinburgh with wonderful verisimilitude. I was up in Edinburgh a few years ago, so I actually have an idea of the locations now. Princes Street Gardens are lovely, so close to the train station, but practically vertical. I can see how someone would splatter falling from the Scott Monument to the ground.

The mystery was very engaging. As I read, it became clear to me that the story was inspired by W.T. Stead’s ‘tabloid journalism’ story from London in a similar time period to the setting of the book. It was called something like ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’. I’m sure I’ve heard an After Dark episode on it. Basically, young, pretty country girls are lured to the city by the offer of a job. They are then taken in by a bawd, raped by rich men with a thing for virgins, and forced into sex work. When I read the Author’s Note at the back on the historical context, I found I was right.

The Butler siblings – campaigners that Sarah gets involved with as she searches for Annabel – are loosely based on real life campaigners against sex work. The characters and Sarah identify poverty as the root cause and the need to eliminate poverty as a solution. They are compared to the attitudes of the Lock Hospital, where former prostitutes who have contracted STIs are locked up, treated (not that there were any effective treatments in the 1850s) and given ‘moral education’ and retraining as skivvies. Basically, they’re lectured to about their wickedness and need to repent, when not scrubbing floors and laundering clothes and bedding. The official response, and that of many religious ‘reformers’ to sex work is that it’s caused by the moral failings of individual women, while the campaigners see the cause as sociological – poverty, lack of education and work, and the oppression of women in society. (And because some men can’t keep it in their pants, and some want someone powerless that they can beat, choke, and rape who isn’t able to go to the police.)

The title is very clever. Lots of people die of shame and some have no shame, but Sarah realises the solution to their problem (no spoilers!) when she realises that shame is used to control people and that the only way out is to refuse to be ashamed, to refuse to worry about what people will say. It’s quite inspiring.

I did realise that the two inciting cases were linked fairly quickly, but I couldn’t work out how, and then later in the novel I realised who the kingpin was, but couldn’t work out how everything would be resolved. It really kept me guessing. The solution was satisfying, as was the ending of the novel, which brings Will and Sarah full circle, back to where they started in the first novel, but in a much better position and having grown as people.

Characters from earlier books make an appearance as important side characters and there are some important developments in Will’s relationship with his wife, which grow out of the events in the novel and past events. Eugenie makes some personal realisations and takes actions that completely change the course of both their lives. The character development of Will, Eugenie, and Sarah compared to the last book feel realistic as they all confront their pasts and make decisions about the future. I found this enjoyable to read, although I did want to smack Eugenie with a medical dictionary occasionally.

I recommend this novel to fans of historical mysteries, but beware the suicide, forced sex work, medical discussions, it might get a bit sticky.

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Author Biography

Chris Brookmyre is an internationally bestselling and multi-award-winning
author and Dr Marisa Haetzman is a consultant anaesthetist of twenty
years’ experience. The couple teamed up to write a series of historical crime
thri lers, featuring the darkest of Victorian Edinburgh’s secrets. The Way of
All Flesh was a Waterstones Thriler and Scottish Crime Book of the Month,
was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculiar Award and shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year. The Art of Dying and A Corruption of Blood were shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year. A Corruption of Blood was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger in 2022. In 2024, Voices of the Dead was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger and their short story A Spendthrift and the Swallow was shortlisted for the CWA Short Dagger Award.

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