Monster
Monster
He turns to the entry about Frankenstein, passing quickly over the paragraphs concerning Mary Shelley’s life until he comes to the account of how she created her infamous story while half-dreaming in her bed in a spooky house on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. It was during the nearly sun-less summer of 1816, just days after she took up a ghost-story challenge with her poet-husband and his friends, one of whom wrote The Vampyre. There are entries that frighten him: a passage without a source about Mary actually seeing a “hideous phantasm of a man” being brought to life by the “working of some powerful engine”! Where could she have seen that? He wonders. And there is another note about her glimpsing a big, bizarre-looking man in the woods not far from where she was living. But there isn’t much Edgar can sink his teeth into in Allen Brim’s notes, no clues that might connect Mary’s fictional creation to what may be in pursuit of him and his friends in this London summer of 1897. Even if it were true that some real creature inspired Frankenstein’s monster, thinks Edgar, that was long ago.
Shane Peacock returns readers to Victorian-era England just a few decades after the events in his award-winning “The Boy Sherlock Holmes” series with another exceptionally well-written series. The premise? The abominable creatures featured in classic horror novels are actually based on truth. Monster picks up immediately where the first novel, The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim left off. Professor Lear has been butchered by something “far worse” than the vampire that the group has just killed. Edgar, friend Tiger, and Lucy and Jonathan Lear, the Professor’s niece and nephew, must now discover which murderous creature is stalking them.
Edgar has just graduated from College on the Moors Boys’ School and been apprenticed to his uncle’s colleague, vivisectionist Dr. Percy Godwin. They have caught fleeting glimpses of the creature and speculate that it may be a Dr. Moreau-like creation. The sensational novel by author H. G. Wells is wildly popular throughout England. Shockingly, the increasingly bizarre and soul-less behaviour of Dr. Godwin, as well as a discovery by Tiger, brings them face to face with the monster. But how to kill it?
After a hair-raising scene atop the Midland Grand Hotel reminiscent of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory, the monster flees. The group must now track it literally to the end of the earth, echoing the pursuit in Mary Shelley’s 1823 novel. There is a poignant scene midway through the chase as their mission seems at its most bleak. Edgar shakes hands with the creature in a gentleman’s promise, despite fully intending to break that promise. The philosophic and moral ramifications will cause readers to pause and to wonder what actions truly make a monster.
A good part of the fun of the second volume, Monster, is when Edgar and friends struggle to figure out which creature is following. Is it a man-animal hybrid from The Island of Dr. Moreau? Dr. Jekyll’s evil side, Mister Hyde? Or another? Dr, Lear further postulated that, if one creature could be killed, another even more horrible, would appear to avenge it. This wonderful premise allows Peacock to borrow classic characters and storylines from novels that have captivated readers for generations. Edgar is a well-written hero who suffers from, of all things, anxiety. Strong secondary characters and a gritty, foggy London all add up to an extremely enjoyable addition to this series.
Shane Peacock was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and grew up in Kapuskasing. He has received many honours for his writing, including the prestigious Arthur Ellis Award for Eye of the Crow and Becoming Holmes and the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Vanishing Girl, all titles in his “The Boy Sherlock Holmes” series. Shane Peacock lives with his wife and three children near Cobourg, Ontario.
Chris Laurie is an Outreach Librarian at Winnipeg Public Library in Winnipeg, Manitoba.