Kathlyn Bradshaw

When I first picked up this book, I admit I was intrigued by it. However, I doubted that it would do justice to Mary Shelley's novel. And right I was.

The Frankenstein Murders takes place two years after the murder of Henry Clerval, Victor Frankenstein's dearest friend. Young Clerval's father, George Clerval, hires investigator Edward Freame, who has solved a number of supposedly supernatural cases, to investigate his son's murder, as the killer had yet to be found.

The British investigator is given Frankenstein's journal, as transcribed by Captain Robert Walton, the last person to have seen the late scientist alive in the Great North. The journal is not only a tale of three murders (that of Henry Clerval, Elizabeth Frankenstein, nee Lavenza, and young William Frankenstein), but also of Frankenstein's claims to have been able to create life from death.

With that in hand, Freame leaves London to retrace Victor Frankenstein's steps through Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, Germany, and glacial Russia, in search of the supposed killer.

This novel, much like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, is written in the epistolary form, comprising of journal entries, articles and correspondences between various characters. It also contains excerpts of Frankenstein's journal, written in Captain Walton's hand. The vocabulary is also similar to the original novel, as to keep it in the same spirit. For all that, the novel is very disappointing.

Throughout his entire investigation, Freame is met with the same obstacles; not acquiring enough information or clues as to whom may have committed Clerval's murder, nor having enough, if any, witnesses to Frankenstein's monster. He travels all across Europe, only to find either uncooperative witnesses, or vague accounts of events leading to the murder. Another obstacle he is met with is his own cynicism; he doesn't believe Frankenstein's monster even exists.

Under the best of times, and based on the little information he was able to collect, Freame shouldn't even have been able to make any sort of conclusion. Nevertheless, he makes one, and while believable and sound, it is extremely anti-climactic.

Both Victor Frankenstein and his horrid creation die in Mary Shelley's novel. The scientist meets his death on board Captain Walton's ship, while the monster burns away on the funeral pyre that he himself built. In Kathlyn Bradshaw's novel, it is implied that either one yet lives, as a murder is committed following Freame's conclusions, in the same fashion as Clerval's.

Mary Shelley's novel left no room for a sequel, the demise of the story's two protagonists having been clearly determined. Yet a sequel was written, which downplays, and gradually dismisses the supernatural aspect of its predecessor.

It's almost as if The Frankenstein Murders strangled Frankenstein and left strangulation marks on its neck, much like the monster killed his victims.… (mehr)