All this is a sign of Robertson’s engagement with her material, as is her decision to move the action to the month of June in 1780, when for seven days London was in the grip of a mob. The dialogue is more expansive the parents are reduced to one widower.
(Kingsley Amis once said he wanted only to read books that begin: “A shot rang out.”) There is, it’s true, a slight hiccup in chronology as the story jumps back to the children on the previous evening. The order of the opening scenes in “Instruments of Darkness” has been shifted, putting the discovery of the body first, which is always a good thing. It isn’t often that one gets to compare versions of an author’s work and see how it has moved on: in this case, the early promise is fulfilled.
A date and various details - a violoncello, a maid, the anatomist’s isolation from county society - established the setting as late-18th-century England. It moved swiftly from a couple of children lying in bed, listening as their father welcomes some visiting musicians downstairs, to a reclusive anatomist receiving news that a body has been found nearby, and back again to the children, eavesdropping on a conversation between their parents. Her opening, one of five winners, was appealing but not sensational. Four years ago, Imogen Robertson submitted the first thousand words of a historical thriller to The Daily Telegraph’s Novel in a Year competition.
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