Blog Tour: Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell

Author: David Morell
Publisher: Mullholland Books
Date of publication: May 2013

Thomas De Quincey, infamous for his memoir Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, is the major suspect in a series of ferocious mass murders identical to ones that terrorized London forty-three years earlier.

The blueprint for the killings seems to be De Quincey's essay "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts." Desperate to clear his name but crippled by opium addiction, De Quincey is aided by his devoted daughter Emily and a pair of determined Scotland Yard detectives.

In Murder as a Fine Art, David Morrell plucks De Quincey, Victorian London, and the Ratcliffe Highway murders from history. Fogbound streets become a battleground between a literary star and a brilliant murderer, whose lives are linked by secrets long buried but never forgotten.


For the most part, I enjoyed Murder as a Fine Art.  I was initially sucked into the story from that first few pages.  The killer goes on his spree and massacres a family, including the baby. I knew I was in for a dark and disturbing killer.  Then it got a bit slow for me.  I didn't like the historical fact parts of the book.  I kind of felt like I was getting a history lesson and that slowed the flow of the book. When the book was just dealing with the fictional story, I enjoyed it a lot more.  The author was able to really convey the dark and depressing time that Victorian London could be.  

I liked the way the author injected passages from Emily's diary so that the reader got her point of view on some of the events.  She was a great character who went against the conventional views of the time.  There is a lot of action in the book, especially at the end.  The killer and his motives weren't easy to pinpoint.  I was also a bit surprised at his ultimate plans for London that were revealed in the end.  I didn't see that coming.  The book is overall a good solid mystery that will keep you guessing until the end.

About the Author

David Morrell is a Canadian novelist from Kitchener, Ontario, who has been living in the United States for a number of years. He is best known for his debut 1972 novel First Blood, which would later become a successful film franchise starring Sylvester Stallone. More recently, he has been writing the Captain America comic books limited-series The Chosen.

For more information on David Morrell and his novels, please visit the official website.  You can also follow David on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.