Mayhem and Murder and the need for more novels where the male body is at risk

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Just finished a book called Mayhem but Sarah Pinborough. It's a suspense novel set in Victorian England around the time that Jack the Riper and the Thames Torso Killer were at large, murdering and dismembering women. In real life, neither were ever caught, but this book focuses on Dr. Bond, a man who helped try to solve the murders. In the novel, he's plagued by an addiction to opium and laudanum, but you get the sense that his sleeplessness and need to numb are due to this evil force that has come to England and wrecked "mayhem" (see title) on the city. The book is interspersed with real newspaper articles from the time, describing the murders. I finished that book in about four days and then yesterday, I checked out the second book in the series, Murder, joking with the librarian that the other rewrote them out of order (mayhem and murder vs. murder and mayhem--she laughed politely but didn't teem to have a clue what I was saying).

The second book also features a now sober Dr. Bond, but a new demon has come the city, and it's killing children. I really like the writing, and how the write moves among several different points of view (first person of Dr. Bond, third for other characters, intertwined with medical sports and London Times articles and letters).  I like too that the novel is written by a woman who seems to have no trouble taking up the male point of view. I feel like male writes do this often, pick up the voice of a female protagonist, but women writers don't try on the male voice as often. I admire Pinborough for that.

It also makes me think of a short story I'd like to write where all of the murder victims are beautiful young men. And the murder would have to be a woman as well, some crazed woman who has no discernible motive. Like, it's not that she was rejected by men, it's just that she kills. And she's deadly smart, despite her insanity. Because 99.9 percent of mysteries novels unravel in this way--women being killed by men for sport. The lead detective would have to be a woman who lives alone and gets obsessed by the details and has no desire for a love life of any kind, though the men she encounters seem to find her attractive and wish for her attention. Has there been a female Holmes? It must exist somewhere, right? If not, I think it should and so I will write it.

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