Hyde

There’s nothing quite like a Victorian chiller to curl up with on a long dark night and once again, Craig Russell has written what is a masterclass in Gothic suspense.

Following on from his awesome The Devil Aspect, this time he takes us pretty much to his home turf – Edinburgh – and a re-imagining of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale of horror.

His protagonist is Captain Edward Hyde – a good man, a senior ranking police officer, whose outward appearance both fascinates and repels the people around him. His dark exterior hides an inner secret: Hyde suffers from a form of epilepsy which takes him into a dreamlike otherworld, which to him is as real as the city of Edinburgh itself. And then the murders start . . . ritualistic slayings which mirror the ancient Celtic threefold death, and Edward Hyde must find the killer in this world or his otherworld . . . or risk losing his mind.

This is marvellous, engrossing storytelling at its very best, and as well as this, it’s also a beautiful love letter to Scotland, its traditions, culture and folklore, and at its very centre lies the beating heart of Edinburgh. No surprise then that Frank Darbont, the writer and director of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, has called this ‘simply exceptional’.

Krystyna Green