Things In Jars By Jess Kidd

Featuring: The Theme Of The Season " Magic, Mystery & Murders"

Readers who love a good period drama, this book is their ideal. Interestingly Jess Kidd’s ” Things In Jars” reminded me of a Hulu Original TV series called “Harlots” & I could not help but find some sort of connection between them, although they have complete different plot backgrounds. Probably because they depict the same time period, but mostly because the show as well as the book, both have strong female protagonists and antagonists & no way do they hide the original picture of the Victorian London, not the pretty scene of the bridge and the Thames that comes to mind but that London which was reeling from the disastrous aftermaths of the Industrial Revolution. Infested with poverty, disease & helplessness, the streets of London were filled with child labours, prostitutes, thieves & the society witnessed a massive class struggle, it reeked of desperation and hunger, the miseries one had to put up with for a few nickels.

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The main plot is set in 1863, when Europe was booming with a strange appeal for resurrectionists, grave robbers, men who called themselves explorers - in search of various natural anomalies and finding reality in myths (mermaids, fairies, nymphs, goblins, giants & other supernatural existences), surgeons who wanted to dissect human bodies and further push the boundaries of science and, not to forget, the cabinet of curiosities where individuals, who looked somewhat, "different" than others in society, were captured by circuses or often sold off by poor parents to become stocks of entertainment and mistreatment and this even stretched up to the royal courts of Kings and highnesses.

Our plot’s lead is the female detective Birdie Divine, the one who has been mentioned by others as someone who will help those whom the coppers cannot or rather will not. The story starts with the discovery of two old dead bodies from a church crypt, the one that Birdie had been invited by his friend, Inspector Rose of Scotland Yard to look into. A dead mother with her dead child with unique features is what she finds. Birdie comes back home to find her housekeeper Cora (a very interesting & unusual character, a woman who is 7 feet tall & was severely abused by a circus company until Birdie found her) informing her about Dr. Harbin. He was an agent of Sir Edmund who had come all the way from Maris House to assign Birdie with the case of finding the Earl’s missing daughter Christabel, a child who was hidden from the world because of her unusual supernatural abilities , in fact forbidden to see even by the servants working in the same house. It didn’t take Birdie long enough to understand that the child would be sold off to some collector as there was no ransom demanded.

Birdie who herself had a very bitter past starting off as the little girl accompanying a resurrectionist, the only person who came close to a family she had, after her real family perished, she soon became an apprentice to a well-known surgeon and from there she incurred too many enemies and bad memories from a treacherous evil man. It is her past that haunts Birdie and also the ghost of a person who says she knows him but she can’t remember; Ruby Doyle, a deceased boxer who follows her from the church from the very beginning of the plot, her very charming accompanist as well as a distant loveable memory.

With her intriguing chase to find the child, the determined Birdie will make you fall in love with her. As the secrets reveal and new turn up appears it's very hard to not be moved by this utterly compelling and well written plot. Sometimes the author gives us the bird (guess which one? A raven Of course!) point of view which is very interesting and this is the first time for me to read a book with this device. Jess Kidd has beautifully sketched all the characters, giving each one a proper backstory and portraying all of them as victims of the world’s cruelties. One might not find it similar to a conventional detective story but aye, it is a hell lot when it comes to the genre of thriller. With an exquisite reference to Irish mythologies in every corner of the story, Jess Kidd has wonderfully blended magic realism to the harsh underbelly of the Victorian London.

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