The Silent House of Sleep by Allan Gaw
‘No one likes death. It just happens to be our business.’
Nobody who meets Dr Jack Cuthbert forgets him. Tall, urbane, brilliant but damaged, this Scottish pathologist who works with Scotland Yard is the best the new DCI has seen. But Cuthbert is a man who lives with secrets, and he still battles demons brought back from the trenches.
When not one but two corpses are discovered in a London park in 1929, Cuthbert must use every tool at his disposal to solve the mystery of their deaths. In the end, the horrifying truth is more shocking than even he could have imagined.
As he works the case, Cuthbert realises that history rarely stays in the past. And even in the final moments, there is still one last revelation that leaves him reeling.
About the author
Allan Gaw is a Scot who lives and works near Glasgow. He studied medicine and is a pathologist by training but a writer by inclination. Having worked in the NHS and universities in Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and the US, he now devotes his time to writing.
Most of his published work to date is non-fiction. These include textbooks and regular magazine articles on topics as diverse as the thalidomide story, the medical challenges of space travel and the medico-legal consequences of the Hillsborough disaster.
More recently, he has been writing short stories, novels and poetry. He has won the UK Classical Association Creative Writing Competition, the International Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, the International Globe Soup 7-day Writing Challenge and was runner-up in the Glencairn Glass/Bloody Scotland Short Crime Fiction Competition. He has also had prose published in the literary journal, From Glasgow to Saturn and anthologies from the Edinburgh Literary Salon and Clan Destine Press in Australia. His poetry has been published by Dreich, Soor Ploom Press and Black Bough Poetry. His debut poetry collection, Love & Other Diseases, was published in 2023 by Seahorse Publications.
The Silent House of Sleep is his debut novel and is the first in the Dr Jack Cuthbert Mystery series.
You can read more about him and his work at his website: https://researchet.wordpress.com/ .
Social Media Links –
- Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/ResearchET
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allangaw8/
Review
‘The Silent House of Sleep’ is a brilliant piece of historical fiction that introduces the character of Dr Jack Cuthbert, a medical pathologist. This is an accomplished debut novel that reads as if the author has been writing fiction for decades. I love reading books from Scottish authors and I thoroughly recommend this book. I am a huge fan of historical fiction and the interwar period is my favourite time to read about. Put in murder and I am sold!
When two bodies are found in a shallow grave in a park in London, Dr Jack Cuthbert is called to examine the bodies as he is the leading pathologist for Scotland Yard. Many think him to be abrupt and aloof but he is battling demons from the Great War, like a lot of the men of this time. As he completes the autopsies what he finds is a shocking truth which leads the investigation in a new direction!
I adored Jack! He is a brilliantly nuanced character and I instantly began to root for him. The author swaps from the present to Jack’s experiences during the war and I thought that this was a powerful mechanism that allowed the reader to really understand Jack as a person. The science and historical medical scenes came across as being completely authentic, maybe something to do with the author being a pathologist! I really liked the relationship between Jack and his assistant.
I devoured this book in record time as I was fully immersed in Jack’s world! I was instantly transported to the late 1920s London and I thoroughly enjoyed my stay! The book was excellently paced and full of tension. The scenes which dealt with Jack’s time in the war were some of the most harrowing that I have read in a while. It was clear the author had done a lot of research when it came to these sections. I found myself having to put my phone down at times to recover from them. It paints war in its truest of harsh colours.
This is an excellent debut and I am excited to see what happens next to Jack! Let me know if you pick this one up!
