Wicked disappointment
The story and characters don’t have enough room to breathe.
Laura Carlin’s debut novel starts off at a heady pace as we’re plunged into the filth, poverty and despair of 19th century London, where residents of Bethnal Green find themselves with something other than starvation and disease to fear.
Young men and women are going missing, disappearing into thin air, leaving families to grieve and a benighted population to wonder what new wickedness is afoot. Hester White has, by dint of “misfortune and malevolence”, found herself in this world but when presented with a chance to escape, grasps the opportunity with both hands.
It’s an exhilarating and extremely assured start to a first novel; unfortunately, The Wicked Cometh doesn’t deliver on that early promise. Initially Carlin’s writing helps build atmosphere but, about a third of the way through, all the ascending from carriages, giving ear to sounds within and forging of paths slows the pace.
Carlin works too hard which means the story and characters don’t have enough room to breathe. The more villainous players in this crimeromance become caricatures; the plot starts to feel increasingly manufactured and, though she writes about terrible crimes perfectly in sync with the era, the tension does not mount.
Rather than a desperate want to find out what’s going on, it’s more a case of reading out of curiosity to see just how Carlin will bring disparate threads and characters together. It’s a fairly contrived ending, as though the author wasn’t quite brave enough to finish her story on a more thoughtprovoking note. Instead, she opts — and there are no spoilers here, really — for one that is more “happy ever after” than anything.
That’s not to say there’s nothing to like about The Wicked Cometh. There’s some nice writing; a couple of interesting plot twists and an enjoyable romance but this could have been so much more than merely an entertaining read.