The Death of Shame by Ambrose Parry
The Death of Shame by Ambrose Parry
Apprentice Sarah Fisher is helping to fund Dr Will Raven’s emerging medical practice in exchange for being secretly trained as a medic, should the rules barring women ever change. Sarah needs no instruction in the inequalities that beset her gender, but even she has her eyes opened to a darker reality when a relative seeks her help in searching for her missing daughter. Annabel Banks was promised a situation in a prestigious household, but there has been no word from her since she left home, and the agency that arranged her position says she never appeared.
Sarah’s inquiries lead her to reforming campaigners trying to publicise the plight of the hundreds of girls ensnared in Edinburgh’s houses of assignation. Sarah learns how young women are lured, deceived, trafficked and raped, leaving them ruined in the eyes of a society obsessed with moral purity, and where virginity is prized as a lucrative commodity.
Review
The Death of Shame is the fifth and final book in the medical mystery series featuring Will Raven and Sarah Fisher by husband and wife team Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman. It’s a sad farewell to this team of sleuths as they investigate their last case against the backdrop of Victorian Edinburgh. The plot line of this particular instalment focuses on the dark theme of female trafficking and prostitution with a side helping of women’s rights.
The book starts with a tragic event when Will Raven’s father-in-law jumps to his death from the Walter Scott monument and it appears he opted to kill himself after being blackmailed. The death of her father has a deep effect on Eugenie as she moves back into her father’s house with the children and makes it clear she wants Will to take over her father’s lucrative practice. However, Will discovers Dr. Todd made a large financial transaction before his death that depleted his finances significantly to the extent Eugenie stands to inherit nothing but debts. A distraught Eugenie begs her husband to find out what happened but as Will digs deeper and finds some pornographic photos he is not sure his wife really wants to know the truth.
Meanwhile, Sarah is asked by a relative of her late husband’s to help find her daughter, Annabel, who came to Edinburgh to take up a position in service but has since disappeared. When Sarah investigates she finds out that young girls are being lured to the capital for employment but the prettier ones are being abducted and sold for their virginity. As the chances of finding Annabel alive diminish, Sarah becomes actively involvement in a movement to help fallen women and exposes the scandal to the newspapers, but there are some powerful men who would be happier to see her silenced. Before long Will and Sarah’s investigations intertwine and they both find themselves in significant danger.
Over the course of five books, the relationship between Will and Sarah has been simmering along despite them both marrying other people. I always felt Will’s marriage to Eugenie was a big mis-step in this series, although I acknowledge it was a way of advancing himself in society, it never really felt like it worked. While Eugenie is obviously still suffering from postnatal depression after the birth of their daughter, her unhappiness goes a lot deeper than that and she ends up making a difficult choice. Although it may have taken Will a while to admit it, he has always been the best version of himself with Sarah and they have reached a place where they have to make their own decisions for their future.
The crimes at the heart of this story once again explore the dark underbelly of Edinburgh and the contrast between the haves and the have nots has been one of my favourite things about this series. While the series has always highlighted the differences between how men and women are treated, the plot line of this novel makes it more blatant as the fallen women encountered have to shoulder society’s blame for the position they find themselves in, yet the men who are responsible for that disgrace receive no blame. Depressingly, it is a problem that has certainly not gone away in modern society.
I’m not going to spoil the end for any readers yet to read the final instalment, so I will suffice with saying that I will miss this series so much.
