THE DEATH COLLECTOR: Justin Richards: Bloomsbury, 2006: Young Adult: 320pp.What a great opening line: "Four days after his funeral, Albert Wilkes came home for tea."
From this grim beginning, Justin Richards launches into a ripping Victorian yarn filled with "reanimated" cadavers roaming the foggy streets of London, and four redoubtable companions racing against time and evil antagonists to discover the secret of eternal but gruesome life.
Eddie, the ragamuffin pickpocket, George, the rising young star of the British Museum, Liz, the parson's daughter and actress, and Sir William, director of the Museum's Department of
Unclassifiable Artefacts are appealingly characterized and the action is breakneck. The Death Collector is a great old-fashioned adventure story, though the ending is not as good as the rest of the book, being resolved with a deus ex machina in more ways than one.
LW
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