The Yard (Scotland Yard's Murder Squad #1) by Alex Grecian #Bookreview

Title: The Yard
Series: Scotland Yard's Murder Squad #1
Author: Alex Grecian
Publisher: Putnam Books
Published Date: May 29th, 2012
Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Adult
Page Count:422
Format: Hardcover

My Rating: ★ ★ ★.5

Goodreads Summary: 
Victorian London is a cesspool of crime, and Scotland Yard has only twelve detectives—known as “The Murder Squad”—to investigate countless murders every month. Created after the Metropolitan Police’s spectacular failure to capture Jack the Ripper, The Murder Squad suffers rampant public contempt. They have failed their citizens. But no one can anticipate the brutal murder of one of their own . . . one of the twelve. .When Walter Day, the squad’s newest hire, is assigned the case of the murdered detective, he finds a strange ally in the Yard’s first forensic pathologist, Dr. Bernard Kingsley. Together they track the killer, who clearly is not finished with The Murder Squad . . . but why?

Filled with fascinating period detail, and real historical figures, this spectacular debut in a new series showcases the depravity of late Victorian London, the advent of criminology, and introduces a stunning new cast of characters sure to appeal to fans of The Sherlockian and The Alienist.

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 My Review

“Your duty is to society, and the dead have always been a part of society. How we treat the dead says much about us.”

Victorian London is not a good place after the Ripper murders. The police/detectives are not well liked and infact are some of the most hated people in the country at the moment. Add on a new detectives unit that is struggling and ill equipped to handle murders because of the amount and how few resources they have to use. They are all over worked and barely solving anything. Now a detective has been murdered and with no idea who his killer is the new detective has to figure it all out, before another detecitive dies.

 “London is locked in a sort of dance of propriety, and it seems to me that it has led to desperation among certain elements of our society.”

Overall I found this story to be interesting, but a little confusing at times because of how many different perspectives it had. If we would have only had around 4 of them I would have liked it a little more. I know it would have taken certain parts of the story out, but some of it just felt like filler to be.  Walter Day and his wife and one of the other detectives and the killer were the most important in my opinion. In fact the wife could have had a bigger part of this story and I would have enjoyed it even more.
The killers part of the story made me so uncomfortable at times because of how he did things and the fact that he kept messing with things it was just so frusting because of how things kept happening and how everyone kept missing eachother because of how they were having to run all over London.
All the side cases I found interesting, and I especially liked one because of how it went back to the ripper case, but it all felt a bit overdone to me at times with the secretiveness of it.