The Yard by Alex Grecian

The year is 1889 and Scotland Yard is just becoming organized as the crime fighting organization it is known as today.   The London Police are reeling from the loss of public confidence due to their lack in solving the Jack The Ripper case, and the new Murder Squad at the Yard is meant to solve the loss of confidence and decrease the crime rate.

Since the squad is new, so are the detectives making up the first group to be singled out as murder specialists.  There is Inspector Day, fresh to London from a more rural part of the country.  Hammersmith started life in a coal mining community and was determined to break away from the life his entire family knew as coal miners.  Blacker is not sure what he wants, but knows he is good at detecting.  Dr. Kingsley is the Yard's first medical examiner and is excited about a crime detection method he has just been introduced to--fingerprints.  Colonel Sir Edward Bradford is the head of the Yard, and has been given the job to develop it into the type of crime fighting unit London can be proud of.

There are, as always, plenty of crime to be solved.  The Murder Squad only has twelve detectives, and one of them has been murdered.  Such a murder makes the men determined to do whatever it takes to catch the killer.  But this isn't the only death they have to work on.  Bearded men are being killed off, and shaved before their throats are cut.  Children disappear from their families, sometimes to live on the streets, but sometimes for more chilling lives as victims. 

Alex Grecian has written a compelling crime novel that mixes history and heart-stopping thrills.  It is fascinating for those who follow crime to read about the start of one of the world's most pre-eminent crime fighting organizations, and the start of modern crime detection methods.  Each of the detectives in the novel have fully developed characters and the reader is pulled along to the end where all the disparate threads of various investigations are pulled together into a satisfactory ending.  This book is recommended for readers of historical mysteries.