Beloved Poison

This first novel by E.S. (Elaine) Thomson is an historical mystery set in 1850's London. This inaugural outing certainly conjures the horrors of those living in poverty and the crude approaches to so-called medical practices of the times. The author, after all, has a Ph.D. in the history of medicine. This is a period just subsequent to the heyday of Resurrectionists (aka body snatchers or grave robbers) who disinterred the recently dead in order to supply medical teaching facilities with corpses for anatomical study.
Our main character is Jem Flockhart, an apothecary in the crumbling hospital and infirmary of St. Saviour's, in one of the poorest parts of the city. It is slated to be torn down to make way for a new rail line and a junior architect, William Quartermain, has been sent to oversee the removal of hundreds of years of corpses from the adjacent graveyard. Jem is a woman but has been raised by her widowed father as a boy so that she might take over his apothecary practice. “Oh, yes, I was unique among women. There had been an apothecary named Flockhart at St. Saviour’s Infirmary for over one hundred years and I was set to inherit my father’s kingdom amongst the potions. But it took a man to run that apothecary, and so a man I must be.” She has lived her entire life at St. Saviour's in this role, dressing in men's clothing and even visiting houses of prostitution with her good friend, Dr. Bain, to support the charade. When Jem is showing Will around St. Saviour's, they discover a hiding place in the chapel that contains six tiny handmade coffins containing horrible small effigies. Jem shows them to Dr. Bain one evening and the action proceeds from there, because it's clear that he knows something about their origins. Dr. Bain, who had been a co-researcher Jem into the effects of various poisons, is found dead in his home the next day, apparently poisoned. When two more victims follow, Jem is determined to find out who the murderer is. There are several plot twists above and beyond the gender disguise but one can be sure from the outset, that some of the hospital's physicians are at the heart of the mystery. Although I remained engrossed in the story, I was also grossed out by the constant references to the extreme levels of filth that permeated everyday life in the hospital and surrounding slums. The descriptions were frequent and detailed. I also found the foreshadowing of events to come somewhat heavy-handed and too numerous.
Reviews available from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and a detailed storyline from the  NY Journal of Books.