The Death of Shame by Ambrose Parry review: 'rattles along compellingly'

A tale of intrigue set in mid-19th century Edinburgh, The Death of Shame is full of horrors yet also rooted in convincing reality, writes Allan Massie

Edinburgh 1854: a successful society doctor, Cameron Tuck, climbs to the top of the Scott Monument on a winter’s night and throws himself over the edge. We know it is an act of suicide, but his daughter Eugenie will not believe this.

Marisa Haetzman and Chris Brookmyre, who write together under the penname Ambrose Parry.

She herself is married to a young doctor, Will Raven, who is setting up his own practice with no help from his father-in-law. A former pupil of the great Sir James Simpson, the obstetrician, famous for first discovering the value of chloroform as an anaesthetic, Raven is being partly funded by another of Simpson's students, a young woman called Sarah Fisher who herself aspires to be a doctor, though another woman tells her she has no chance of becoming one and would be wiser to serve as a nurse with Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War.

This, after the leap from the monument, is a suitably convincing, matter-of-fact opening to what proves to be a grim tale of vice and crime. One might add that it is clear from the first that Sarah is in love with Will, and as his marriage crumbles we are likely to hope they will come together in the end.

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Edinburgh has long been recognized as a two-faced city, a gift to the novelist exploited by, among others, Scott, Hogg and Stevenson, more recently by Spark and Rankin: virtue on the surface, vice flourishing in its lower depths, these also being explored by the well-to-do. Ambrose Parry, the husband-and-wife team of of Chris Brookmyre and Dr Marisa Haetzman, are in a well-established tradition, therefore, and write with gusto and understanding. There is a richly complicated plot - but one happily easy to follow and also admirably credible.

It has two strands: first the question of what caused Tuck to leap to his death; second a search of the city's brothels, with their often rich and supposedly virtuous patrons. Sarah's 12-year-old niece has come to the city for a position as a domestic servant but then disappeared. Has she been picked up in the street and taken to work in the sex trade?

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On the one hand, Raven is confronted by the problem of his late father-in-law's finances: he has drawn money from his bank, which has disappeared. On the other, there is the question of Sarah’s niece. There is, Raven discovers, a possible link. If young girls are vulnerable, so, in a different way, are their respected patrons. Raven soon learns of distinguished doctors being blackmailed. Was Dr Tuck one of them? To add to the dangers, a vigorous gutter press eagerly spreads stories of vice and corruption.

The Death of Shame is a long novel but one so well devised and plotted that it rattles along compellingly. It is full of horrors, yet at the same time the characterization and the authors' mastery of pace means that you are likely to read it very happily at the gallop. I found it thoroughly enjoyable, a fine piece of craftsmanship. It is well anchored, partly because the relationship between Raven, Sarah, and Raven’s wife Eugenie is rooted in convincing reality, something rare in this kind of fiction, partly because even Raven, a worthy hero, has a dark and disturbing Past himself. That said, I did wonder if it was normal for a doctor to have a key which would admit him to the Scott Monument on a winter's night.

The Death Of Shame by Ambrose Parry, Canongate, £18.99

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