Rattus Rex

by Colin Andrew McLaren

175 pages, Hardcover

First published September 28, 1978

Reviews

[Capn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inside flap, ISBN 0860360741:

It was 1863. London cowered before an onslaught of inexplicable crimes: solitary beggars vanished from the streets, babies from their prams, corpses from new graves. What had it to do with Mr Bazalgette's new sewers? And the earthquake of 1862? And a 17th-century captain from the Indies? Mathew Mark, a 16-year-old engraver, and Jabez Rimmer, an unpredictable journalist, discovered the answer, aided by an Oxford don, a zoologist from Aberdeen, an Irish 'tosher' and 'Pride and Passion', a Nightingale nurse. Their investigations took them through London-under-the-ground, to the British Museum, the offices of Punch and the wastes of Barking Marsh, by iron-clad train, vacuum tube and dirigible balloon. Forty years later, when the truth can safely be revealed, Mathew Mark sets down what Rimmer vowed would be a 'rattling good yarn'.

COLIN McLAREN is Keeper of the Manuscripts in Aberdeen University Library.

Jacket illustration by Phillip Hood

Well that was violent. And certainly memorable.

You know when you read a book and think to yourself, "Oh! I know just the person who needs to read this book!"? Well this gave me the opposite feeling - I know a person who should never, ever read this book. She'd go completely off her rocker. It would just confirm her fears about giant, evil rats lurking in the sewers and feeding on the dead.

I did weirdly enjoy this, though if it had been a movie, I'd be unable to stomach it - there are many gruesome, torturous deaths. There are as many explosions as in a Die Hard movie (yippee kai-eh). There is a bus load of trapped children, mauled to death by rats, their faces gnawed off in an act of revenge and many other upsetting and needlessly violent scenes. I can see how this stuck in my friend's memory (thank you, Len, for the recommendation! Enjoyably singular!) - this was for the teenage market in the days before the YA distinction.

Another review wrote (in German) that the author clearly never learned what a suspense arc was. I won't refute that. The structure was more of a cheesy horror film than a carefully contrived tale. But I think it is part of its charm - I was never sure where the story was going to lead. It seemed as convoluted and as dark to me as the historical sewers of London, from Roman trenches to the built-over open sewers of medieval times, the Regency era drainage, the Underground, to the many layers up until Bazalgette (did I mention that Bazalgette is a minor character?! He is!), and equally disgusting.

I also liked that there was a naturalist (MacWhinnie) around, to occasionally point out that rats weren't monsters. These ones are, of course, otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. Oh yes, some disagreeable, litigious Americans meet a bad end, too. It's a callous romp.

I read this over Christmas and New Year's and was pleased to discover that the time frame overlapped in the story, ending in the first days of 1864, and referencing "the most potent negus that ever scalded gullet".

A properly weird horror involving some steampunk-esque fixtures (a dirigible and pneumatic tubes.. which I had physics and biology issues with in re: maintenance of a vacuum and breathing within, etc., but nevermind). Worth tracking down if this review hasn't scared you off.

[Sophia.lmps · Rating 1 out of 5]

War nicht ganz scheiße aber Spannungsbogen hat der Autor irgendwie nicht in der Schule gelernt