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Junior
Scholastic
Hardback £12.99
ISBN: 0439978416
Reviewed by Dennis Hamley
[Armadillo 6.3 Autumn 2004]
Eleanor Updale's second Victorian melodrama about Montmorency, like the first, re-enacts a pervasive nineteenth-century theme, the split personality. In a sense, though, Montmorency is a good, respectable Jekyll whose behaviour has been learnt while his Scarper is a submerged and instinctive Hyde. After a year of undercover work abroad with his friend and mentor Foxe-Selwyn, he has returned as a hopeless drug addict.
Foxe-Selwyn takes him to his friend Dr Farcett (who operated on Montmorency and unwittingly gave him his new life) and they go to Scotland to help him lose his addiction. There is an explosion on King's Cross station as their sleeper leaves. When Foxe-Selwyn is called back to London because of it, Montmorency and Farcett go to the island of Farimond, where a mystery illness is killing babies. Now the story alternates between Farimond and London and the two mysteries become curiously intertwined, though with the coincidence so typical of melodrama.
At one level the novel is an effective pastiche. But there's more to it than this. The period atmosphere is superb. The outcomes are not black and white. The solutions to the puzzles and the way they are reached share a nagging moral ambiguity. The whole conception of Montmorency as a character is remarkable, though most other characters come from stock. The main reservation I have is the same as for the first Montmorency. There is too much reporting, not enough dramatisation: page after page reads more like a very detailed plot outline. Only this prevents them from rivalling Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart series.