FROM FACT TO FICTION

Mesmerising murder

Ambrose Parry (writing couple Chris Brookmyre and Dr Marisa Haetzman) discuss Voices of the Dead, their latest historical thriller

Your new book is set in Edinburgh in 1853. How did you reconstruct life in the Victorian city? We used various historical sources, including chloroform pioneer James Young Simpson’s casebooks, plus the Scottish National Library’s online collection of contemporary maps. It fires the imagination to look at buildings and imagine the events that might have transpired within their walls.

Marisa, how did you draw on your knowledge of medical history? Mid-19th-century Edinburgh was a hive of medical innovation and discovery, but this era also coincided with a resurgence of interest in mesmerism and spiritualism. I was inspired by an incident in which Simpson disrupted a spiritualist demonstration, reflecting the battle between science and superstition.

Were any characters or events inspired by real life? As well as Simpson and the noted police detective James McLevy, the book features Henry Littlejohn, who became Scotland’s first Medical Officer for Health. We also took inspiration from the murder of Dr George Parkman, whose dismembered remains were found at Harvard Medical School in 1849.

In your book, medic Sarah Fisher is drawn to mesmerism. Did such fields provide more opportunities for women than orthodox medicine? Marisa discovered an annual report that discussed opening up instruction in mesmerism to anyone who wished to learn. At a time when women were not allowed to study anything at university, let alone medicine, we imagined that Sarah might be more open-minded about mesmerism than male contemporaries who could afford to dismiss it as humbug.

Voices of the Dead by Ambrose Parry Canongate, 416 pages, £16.99