Peter Ackroyd is a writer of considerable acclaim but one feels at the end of this tale as though one has been in the hands of an overly purposeful editor, rather than having been treated to literary creativity, a mortuary assistant that is adept at cleaning and arranging the dead limbs of others, rather than a choreographer of souls. Somewhere, there has been a curative, cathartic, surgical or even therapeutic effect, it is true but after the novel has finished, one feels overall that the place of operative therapy has been left, and one drifts, as does the internal final audience of the novel, into the cold, dark mistiness of real life with hardly the memory of stage and artifice to sustain you. Was it all just a charade?

This is an interesting consequence since one of the themes of the novel is the relationship between reality and art, and the admixture of the two in the way in which individuals, to a greater or lesser conscious degree, perform in life, live out roles, and more importantly, imagine themselves to be representative of certain types - here the use of the writer, George Gissing, is interesting. The novel is also to some extent about the unintended effects that lives have, regardless of the purpose of the 'actors' within them, and several other historical characters are brought together in imaginative liaisons of thought and intersection in time, the results of which are almost interpreted by the author as being suprapersonal in nature - the effective combination of social and historical forces, chance readings, and the directions of the spirit of place.

However, there is too much artifice evident in the structure of the novel to make such a collective and elevated spirit feel organic or natural, as much as Ackroyd is determined to present, like some stage manager himself, the soul of London, as such. There's too much blood and greasepaint; yes, all these devices could be said to be the clever and well executed stunts of a sublime director but there's a surfeit in the abiding feeling that we the audience are being goosed and sent up, manipulated and obviously misdirected for one to feel one has been able to submerse oneself. The parallel between religion and the stage is drawn repeatedly, whereby religion is maligned or spoofed, yet Ackroyd's own substitute collective daemon is itself too much of a barely animated concoction, much like the golem of the title, to warrant more than passing interest before being equally dismissed as an absurd rationale for human action.

In the end, the characters to an extent are a series of edits of others; Leno is a returned Grimaldi, Elizabeth Cree an imposter on physical and textual levels, Gissing and 'John' Cree echoes in their different ways of De Quincey; sexual roles are also reversed or subverted - there is a lot made of transvestitism and homosexuality. They are parts, rehearsed and open to substitution, so that the individual becomes lost.

At bottom, the audience leaves the final performance and resolves into the various members, like a decaying golem, whose magic has dissipated: the poor, the middle-classes, the educated, the ignorant, law-abiding and lawless all go their separate ways, to continue to worship at their separate altars, and the barely collective sense of purpose in and of place, after a brief medicinal delirium, goes out like a stage light. ( )

Peter Ackroyd is one of my mother's favourite writers so when I saw this book at a discount store I bought it for her: she already had it though so I read it myself and, to my surprise, really enjoyed it.

Generally I don't like Ackroyd but this was interesting and engagingly written. Murder, Victorian London, gaslights and music halls - entertaining and atmospheric. ( )

Imagining a semi-fictional Victorian-era England that is awash in prostitution, theatre, and bloodshed, Peter Ackroyd's novel The Trial of Elizabeth Cree is a brief but vivid murder mystery that is compulsively readable though convoluted, a novel whose journey is, sadly, somewhat more satisfying than its destination.

Melding the real-life Ratcliffe Highway murders with Jack the Ripper's crimes, Ackroyd opens the book with the execution of Elizabeth Cree before establishing, with unflinching graphicness, a killer fond of dismemberment and disembowelment. As the murders develop and the history of the hanged Cree is explored, Ackroyd uses multiple perspectives, including journals and first-person narratives, to advance the plot and deepen the mystery.

Ackroyd's handling of these different perspectives is his strength, as he is as comfortable in a journal as he is in a court transcript. He is also highly skilled at revealing just enough information to make the reader think that there is something else developing -- a skill that, by the novel's middle, opens up a wealth of red herrings and potential directions that could explain the plot. Unfortunately, the result of such detailed off-roads is that the true resolution is both simpler than expected and yet potentially fraught with complications of its own. If it was Ackroyd's intent for us to challenge even his given answer, he has succeeded, but it's not clear that he has.

What is clear is that Ackroyd has a great passion for history and for London specifically. His exploration of the Limehouse region makes the city come to life, as if the region asked for the murders to happen. His implementation of such true figures as Dan Leno, George Gissing, and even Karl Marx lend an air of legitimacy to the fictional tale. In fact, the British Library Reading Room ends up becoming a key location in determining the outcome of the mystery.

The tale is unflinching and surprisingly explicit, and though its conclusion does not match the intensity of its development, The Trial of Elizabeth Cree remains an intriguing and exciting read that is sure to have you hooked and keep you guessing until the end.

A grim story of a series of Jack the Ripper style murders in 1880, with a twist at the end. Mostly fairly gripping, though some of the chapters about stage life dragged a bit for me. The author's love and knowledge of London come through here as elsewhere. ( )

"Here we are again".

OK so "Dan Leno etc" is the second work by Ackroyd I've read this year but this phrase is pertinent to this novel as anyone else who reads it will discover. And a fun bit of camp, gothic and gaslight hokum it is too, with which to while away a few hours.

Set amongst the music halls or low variety theatres of the East End of London between the mid-1860s and 1880, Ackroyd not only invents a splendid fictitious series of murders which echo a series of shockers of the early 19th century but also introduces legendary comedian Dan Leno as major player and rounds up Karl Marx and Oscar Wilde as walk on parts (and Charles Babbage and his "Analytical Engine" as defunct and very stationary bit players respectively) to boot.

Although relatively short at around 280pp, the novel weaves together a variety of voices - the reminiscences of the former variety girl turned respectable middle class wife; her husband, a former journalist and would-be dramatist who has come into money; the former university student who has married an alcoholic whore in an attempt to "redeem" her; the gay detective and his engineer boyfriend; and of course the voice of Ackroyd himself providing a documentary voice and commentary upon his fictitious non-fictitous fictitious 'orrible murders - all ably supported by a cast of thousands including assorted persons of the stage, East End whores, down and outs, cab drivers, a pornographic photographer with a taste for being spanked, surly waiters and audiences satisfied or otherwise.

Hokum from beginning to end but a novel to lose oneself in on a winter's evening. ( )