Enjoyable if slight historical thriller treading the well worn paths of Victorian London to create an atmospheric story of murder and espionage.

The Lazarus Club is a secret talking shop for some of the brightest minds of the age. Surgeon George Phillips is invited to join by none other than Isambard Kingdom Brunel, currently obsessed with building the biggest ship of the age, The Great Eastern.  Phillips becomes fascinated by the secretive Club, by its thrilling discussions of  revolutionary ideas and by some of its more enigmatic members, Brunel in particular. However when a string of grisly murders becomes connected to the Club, it is Phillips who becomes involved up to his neck.

The backdrop to the action is a bit of a checklist of expected Victorian settings where operating theatres, sewers, yards (ship and grave), brothels, taverns and gaslit alleys are all present and correct. All however are nicely done and it is not difficult to be drawn in. A whistle stop tour of meetings with high Victorian luminaries, threatens to trip the thing over . “Is that Bazalgette over there with Florence Nightingale talking to some fellow called Darwin/Babbage/Brunel” is on occasion a bit clunky.  It is therefore something of  a surprise that neither Charles Dickens nor Queen Victoria make an appearance. No matter, her Imperial toilet does.

The Minutes Of The Lazarus Club starts out as dark, medical thriller featuring a shady Jack The Ripper precursor 40 years early, but  neatly evolves into something else entirely as the worlds of high finance, high politics and cutting edge science are drawn into the plot. And over them all looms the huge presence of The Great Eastern itself, which is an original and worthwhile setting.

In juggling his elements Pollard keeps everything the right side of cliche chiefly by embracing so many of them so enthusiastically and The Minutes Of The Lazarus Club is an engrossing diversion.

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