The Death Collector (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Death Collector Elizabeth Bush Richards, Justin The Death Collector. Bloomsbury, 2006 [320p] ISBN 1-58234-721-2$16.95 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 6-10 It was a damp and foggy London night—in fact, all the London nights are damp and foggy, and the days aren't much better, in this rerun of classic mad scientist movie plots. When the reanimated corpse of a British Museum employee arrives at home for tea, disappears while walking the dog, and later turns up reburied—but with dinosaur bones tucked under his skin—there's clearly foul play afoot. Sir William Protheroe, the Museum's Curator of Unclassified Artefacts, and a trio of teen helpers comprising a pickpocket, another museum worker, and a minister's daughter are on the trail of industrialist Augustus Lorimore, who has sent around murderous henchmen to retrieve vital bits of diaries at the B.M., and who has gigantic, steam-breathing monsters roaming around his property terrorizing trespassers and occasionally running down enemies in the, yes, foggy streets. En route to the Good vs. Evil climactic showdown, readers are treated to such stock scenes as a séance (only partially phony) and a laboratory that—zounds!—features electronic gizmos that harness lightning to reanimate dead matter. There's dialogue that would do Mel Brooks proud ("You can't stop me now. No one can stop me now. . . . I have the power to create life"), but it's delivered without a hint of irony. The plot may have seen better days (in fact, the human/monster hybrid seems to be reworked from Richards' Ghost Soldiers, BCCB 3/06, in his Invisible Detective series) but clever cuts between scenes and keen cinematic timing should nonetheless keep B-movie fans racing to the finale. Copyright © 2006 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois