Jekyll, Alias Hyde - Hardcover

Donald Thomas was born in Somerset and educated at Queen's College, Taunton, and Balliol College, Oxford. He holds a personal chair in the University of Wales, Cardiff, now Cardiff University. His numerous crime novels include two collections of Sherlock Holmes stories and a hugely successful historical detective series written under the pen name Francis Selwyn and featuring Sergeant Verity of Scotland Yard, as well as gritty police procedurals written under the name of Richard Dacre. He is also the author of seven biographies and a number of other non-fiction works, and won the Gregory Prize for his poems, Points of Contact. He lives in Bath with his wife.

Thomas's unsatisfying "variation" adds another to the growing list of exploitations of past masters in the mystery-spinning art. The British author borrows Stevenson's characters and invents others, like daughters for the lawyer Utterson, the eldest of whom, Romana, is nearly a match for lustful and dangerous Edward Hyde. Thomas gives a role to Inspector Swain, the object of Romana's bloodthirsty seductions and investigator of weird events in London during the year 1884. Piling on extras that stray from and dilute the original plot, the author wearies rather than excites, even as he alludes to heavy-breathing sex between Romana and Swain. In the end, the adaptation fails to convince the rader that it reveals the truth about The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.