bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

moreOnThisArticles

urlAlias

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

paywallTypes

corrections

sponsorType

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

socialHeadline

headline

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

publishedDate

additionalInfoBoxes

images

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

createdDate

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Nick Ryan

The Minutes of the Lazarus Club 
by Tony Pollard 
Michael Joseph 
HK$234  
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen meets Sherlock Holmes: that concept will give you some indication of where  Tony Pollard's  'gaslight' drama enters the crowded thriller market.
Set in the 1850s, The Minutes of the Lazarus Club  is a hefty tome sporting a cast including Isambard Kingdom Brunel,  renowned engineer of the Victorian age; naturalist Charles Darwin;  Michael Faraday,  physicist and chemist; inventor Charles Babbage  and Joseph Bazalgette,  creator of London's sewer system, all brought together by the author, a  battlefield and forensic archaeologist who has clearly done a great deal of research.
The  protagonist, surgeon George Phillips, plunges into the secret world of the Lazarus Club with an introduction from the cigar-flaunting Brunel, offering to rescue him from the irascible clutches of a power-hungry hospital boss, Sir Benjamin Brodie. Brunel displays an intense interest in what Phillips can tell him about the  workings of the heart and attends all his dissections and lectures.
Invited by Brunel to talk to a select group of scientists and forward thinkers, Phillips meets most of the significant players in the Industrial Revolution. It is at the Lazarus Club that these great actors of history discuss revolutionary technological and social concepts: it is also a gentleman's world, full of port, claret but invention and progress too. 
Drawn deep into Brunel's life in particular, Phillips is right there at pivotal moments, such as the launch of the great engineer's enormous iron-clad ship, The Great Eastern,  which stalls and kills several workers. He is present as Darwin muses on his theories and shares his somewhat ludicrous views on his own supposed ailments; and he delves into Bazalgette's sewers as they are being constructed. 
He even  forms a relationship with the heroine of the Crimea,  Florence Nightingale - between manly visits to a brothel, of course.
But The Minutes of the Lazarus Club would not be a thriller without some form of skullduggery: Phillips, visits to 'his club' and nocturnal associations aside, is slowly drawn into a morass of suspicion, murder and intrigue seemingly emanating - to his horror - from his new associates. Horribly mutilated corpses are dragged from the Thames, for which an increasingly suspicious police inspector begins  to question him; there is the development of a new secret weapon; sabotage of Brunel's ship; and the almost obligatory evil agents of a  foreign power on his tail. Phillips begins the novel as an innocent it seems and has to travel that path of many heroes, from suspicion to near-death, to thwart the evil at the heart of his new-found friendships.
The real strength of The Minutes of the Lazarus Club lies in the detailed description of life in London - and England in general - in the late 1850s and in the consideration of the intellect, innovations and vision of the men introduced. The search for the serial killer and the threats on Phillips' life are entertaining, but the  length of the novel makes the book a little clunky and slow.
Nevertheless, there is plenty to enjoy in this  debut, from the virtuous and brave to the ruthless, seemingly unstoppable villains.



The Minutes of the Lazarus Club