Published by Xoum Publishing

Synopsis:

Seven years after the death of Edward Hyde, a stylish gentleman shows up in foggy London claiming to be Dr Henry Jekyll. Only Mr Utterson, Jekyll’s faithful lawyer and confidant, knows that he must be an impostor – because Jekyll was Hyde.

But as the man goes about charming Jekyll’s friends and reclaiming the estate, and as the bodies of potential challengers start piling up, Utterson is left fearing for his life … and questioning his own sanity.

From the internationally acclaimed Australian author Anthony O’Neill comes Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Seek, an ingenious, original sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

I’ve never read the original The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but I know the story (and watched the James Nesbitt retelling on ITV years ago, it was awesome). This book picks up 7 years after the original left off, with a handydandy opening chapter which gives you all the highlights and details you need to know for the rest of the book to make sense, in the form of a dialogue between Utterson and his friend.

The writing style fits perfectly to the historical fiction genre, while also being easy to read rather than dry and clunky. The suspense is wonderful, using an unreliable narrator who believes himself to be losing his mind – this whips you up into the same frenzy of paranoia he finds himself in and makes it a really engaging reading experience.

The characters are well written and perfectly fit what you’d expect (even if you haven’t read the original), I really appreciate that this is a very respectful sequel of a classic.

I actually wish that there had been more to this book in terms of substance, it felt like it finished too soon and without fully satisfying my need for classic Victorian sci-fi melodrama – possibly the best criticism an author can get, I guess: ‘I NEED MORE!’.

I’m glad I found this author, I’ll now have to check out some more of his work to see if I can find my next fix.