The Candle Man by Alex Scarrow

Summary:
1912. Locked in an eerily quiet dining room on the Titanic, a mysterious man tells a young girl his life story as the ship begins to sink.
It all starts in Whitechapel, London in 1888...
In the small hours of the night in a darkened Whitechapel alley, young Mary Kelly stumbles upon a man who has been seriously injured and is almost unconscious in the gutter. Mary - down on her luck and desperate to survive - steals his bag and runs off into the night.
Two days later, an American gentleman wakes in a hospital bed with no memory of who he is or how he got there. He has suffered a serious head injury, and with no one to help him remember who he is he starts to wonder how he will ever find his way home.
One terrible truth links these two lost souls in the dark world of Victorian London - a truth that could ruin the name of the most influential man in the land...
Back in 1912, as the Titanic begins its final shuddering descent to the bottom of the frozen, black Atlantic, the truth behind a series of murders that have hung like a dark fog over London for more than two decades is about to be revealed... the identity of Jack the Ripper.
Review:
The reviews I of this novel that I'd read prior to reading the novel itself called it underwhelming and disappointing (from a writer who is capable of such grand things as TimeRiders), so when I started reading my expectations were not very high to say the least. I was, therefore, very pleasantly surprised to see just how good this book was - it's one of Scarrow's best yet to be sure.
Let's make this clear - this is NOT another Titanic based novel (which is a good thing since far too many have been published as a result of the 100th anniversary of its sinking already). The prologue and epilogue take place on the Titanic and that is all. In reality it might have been better to have some interludes take place on the Titanic as well, because as it is it just feels like the prologue and epilogue were tagged on to increase book sales by taking advantage on the Titanic's 100 year anniversary.
The premise is something like The Bourne Identity, except that it takes place in Victorian England. instead of modern Europe. Similar elements include the whole "an amnesiac killer being saved by a woman" concept. With such a large similarity I might feel inclined to put down lack of originality as a problem with the book, but the characters of Jason Bourne and John Argyll, as well as those of Mary Kelly and Marie St. Jacques (the name similarities are coincidental, as I will explain below) are so very different that saying such a thing would be a little too harsh in my mind.
The biggest problem I have with this book is that it mimics the format of most of Scarrow's other novels;
Two plotlines in two different settings? Check.
A killer with an affinity for sharp objects (psychopathology optional)? Check
Conspiracy theory? Check
One of the main characters dies at the end? Check
Of course, I understand that elements 2 and 4 are essential for this story to work, but still, Scarrow needs to learn to be a little more creative with his plot formatting/elements.
I must admit I have some trouble with Scarrow's choice of a protagonist. The morals (or should I say the lack thereof) of a part-time prostitute is hardly relatable and a little off-putting. I do, however, have to admit that it was necessary to stay true to the Ripper story.
Characters in general in this book were not as well developed as they have been in Scarrow's previous novels, which makes it harder to sympathize with the characters. The characters, however, are not so poorly developed as do be disjointed, awkward, stiff and two dimensional - they are still developed enough for the story to flow quite nicely.
The foul language in The Candle Man was quite jarring. I wouldn't have expected the f-word to be so liberally used in the nineteenth century, but for some reason Scarrow threw plenty in there anyway. This was annoying because it tends to disrupt the flow of the story somewhat (but not enough to be too aggravating).
The intensity isn't as high as it was in October Skies, which was a very minor disappointment because The Candle Man is still intense enough, and fast enough paced, that at times it is absolutely impossible to put down. I stayed up way later than I should have reading this book and then went right back to it after eating breakfast the next morning - it was THAT good. There are scenes aplenty that get your heart pounding like there is no tomorrow. The Candle Man is hard to pin down in a specific thriller sub-genre beyond the fact that it is a "historical thriller". It is most definitely NOT your standard serial killer thriller as one might expect (seeing as it argues that Jack the Ripper was not a serial killer at all). It is also neither a psychological thriller or an action thriller, but rather a hybrid of the two, which is part of what makes it so hard to put down.
The historical details from the Jack the Ripper killings that Scarrow uses are scarily accurate (I checked them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_the_Ripper). The names of all the victims are the same, and in the same order, as the historical account; the differing levels of evisceration of the different victims is accurate and worked seamlessly into the story's plotline; I could go on. These accurate details make the story seem so realistic and plausible, it seems like it actually could have happened that way, which is a little unnerving, and in that way adds to The Candle Man's draw as a novel.
All in all a very well written, fast paced, intense, and realistic thriller. I very highly recommend it to fans of historical fiction or suspense novels. I personally loved it. Scarrow is now officially in fifth place on my list of favorite thriller authors.
4.5/5 stars