David Morrell: The Fine Art of Death. "The Fine Art of Death" David Morrell

David Morrell with the novel The Fine Art of Death for download in fb2 format.

In 1811, London was rocked by the Ratcliffe Highway murders, where two families were brutally massacred within a week. Almost half a century later, Thomas De Quincey returned to the city, vividly describing this tragedy in his essay “Murder as One of the Fine Arts.”
A few days after his arrival, another family suffers the same terrible death. It seems that someone was inspired by the book and uses it as a guide to action. Suspicion falls on De Quincey himself. With the help of his daughter Emily and two Scotland Yard detectives, he must discover the truth before more blood is shed and stop a killer whose brutality rivals Jack the Ripper himself.

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Today, a large amount of electronic literature is available on the Internet. The publication The Fine Art of Death is dated 2014, belongs to the “Detective” genre in the “The Big Book” series and is published by the Azbuka publishing house. Perhaps the book has not yet entered the Russian market or has not appeared in electronic format. Don’t be upset: just wait, and it will definitely appear on UnitLib in fb2 format, but in the meantime you can download and read other books online. Read and enjoy educational literature with us. Free downloading in formats (fb2, epub, txt, pdf) allows you to download books directly into an e-reader. Remember, if you really liked the novel, save it to your wall on a social network, let your friends see it too!

David Morrell

THE FINE ART OF DEATH

To Robert Morrison and Grevel Lindop, who guided my journey into the world of Thomas De Quincey.

Introduction

At first glance, it seems surprising that mid-Victorian England, famous for its primness, literally went crazy with a new genre of fiction - the detective novel. Wilkie Collins's 1860 novel The Woman in White marked the beginning of what Victorian critics termed "detective mania." She turned out to be akin to “a virus spreading in all directions” and satisfied “hidden, unhealthy desires.”

The roots of the new genre lie in the Gothic novels of the previous century, with the only difference being that detective authors place their heroes not in ancient gloomy castles, but in completely modern houses of familiar Victorian England. The darkness is not of supernatural origin. It nestles in the hearts of seemingly respectable citizens whose personal lives are full of terrifying secrets. Madness, incest, violence, blackmail, infanticide, arson, drug addiction, poisoning, sadomasochism and necrophilia - this is not a complete list of “skeletons in the closet” that, according to the authors, were hidden behind the external Victorian gloss.

Upon closer examination, it turns out that the craze for a new genre that brought dark secrets to the light of day was a natural reaction to the general secrecy characteristic of that time. It is difficult to even imagine to what extent the English middle and upper classes separated their private lives from their public ones and how carefully they hid their true feelings from outsiders. The common practice of keeping windows permanently curtained reflects very well the Victorian English attitude towards their home and private life: it is a sacred territory from which one can look out, but into which it is forbidden to look. Every house abounded in secrets; their presence was considered something taken for granted and did not concern any outsiders.

The scandalous, out-of-his-time Thomas De Quincey, whose theories about the supernatural predated Freud's teachings by seventy years, spoke about the general reserve and habit of hiding personal life: “Of one thing at least I am sure: the mind is incapable of forgetting; thousands of random events can and will create a veil between our consciousness and the secret writings of memory, and thousands of the same events, in turn, can tear that veil, but, one way or another, those writings are eternal; they are like stars that seem to hide before the ordinary light of day, but we know: the light is only a cover thrown over the luminaries of the night, and they wait to appear again until the day that eclipses them disappears itself.”

De Quincey became famous when he committed an act that was previously incredible: he exposed his personal life in the famous bestseller “Confessions of an Englishman who used opium.” William Burroughs later described it as "the first and still the best book on drug addiction."

De Quincey's eerie prose, especially the essay “Murder as One of the Fine Arts,” allows him to be called the founder of the detective genre. This work, shocking to the unprepared reader, sheds light on the famous murders on the Ratcliffe Highway, which in 1811 horrified the population of London and all of England. It is tempting to compare the effect of these crimes with the fear that gripped the East End of London at the end of the nineteenth century, in 1888, when Jack the Ripper committed several sensational murders. It turns out that the panic that followed the events on the Ratcliffe Highway was much more widespread. The reason is that these brutal massacres were the first of their kind, the news of which quickly spread throughout the country, thanks to the growing importance of newspapers (in London alone there were fifty-two in 1811) and the recently improved system of mail delivery by mail coaches. , which traveled all over England at a constant speed of ten miles per hour.

In addition, all those killed by the Ripper were prostitutes, while the victims of the Ratcliffe Highway murders were businessmen and their families. Only the “moths of the night” were afraid of Jack the Ripper, and literally every resident of London had reasons to fear the killer of 1811. Details of how the criminal dealt with his victims can be found in the first chapter of this story. To some they may seem shocking and disgusting, but everything is based on historical evidence.

Much time has passed since we read Thomas De Quincey, but the bloody horror he described is still fresh in our memory and has not lost its monstrous power. And to this day, every night makes us tremble again and again from a paralyzing and incredibly real fear and brings to life nightmares to which we are doomed by the fact that we have become acquainted with the work of De Quincey.

British Quarterly Review, 1863.

"THE ARTIST OF DEATH"

...To create a truly beautiful murder, it takes more than two stupid people - the person being killed and the killer himself, and in addition to them a knife, a wallet and a dark alley. Composition, gentlemen, grouping of persons, play of chiaroscuro, poetry, feeling - these are what are now considered necessary conditions for the successful implementation of such a plan. Like Aeschylus or Milton in poetry, like Michelangelo in painting, the great murderer carries his art to the limits of grandiose sublimity.

Thomas De Quincey. Murder as one of the fine arts/

London, 1854.

They say that Titian, Rubens and van Dyck always painted in full dress. Before immortalizing their visions on canvas, they took a bath and thus symbolically cleared their consciousness of everything extraneous. Then they put on the best clothes, the most beautiful wigs, and in one case there was also a sword with a hilt studded with diamonds.

“The Artist of Death” was prepared in a similar way. He put on an evening suit and sat for two hours, staring at the wall, concentrating. When dusk fell on the city and it became dark in the room with the curtained window, he lit an oil lamp and began to put his analogues of brushes, paints and canvases into a black leather bag. There was also a wig (remember Rubens) - yellow, not at all similar in color to his light brown hair. He also took with him a false beard of the same color. Ten years ago, a bearded man would have attracted everyone's attention, but the latest trends in fashion, on the contrary, would make others turn around at the sight of a man with a clean-shaven chin. Among other items, he placed in the bag a heavy ship's carpenter's hammer - an old one, with the letters J. P. scratched on the striking part. Instead of a sword encrusted with diamonds, which one of the artists of the past hung on his belt while working, our “artist” put a razor with an ivory handle in his pocket.

He left his lair and walked several blocks to a busy intersection to hail a cab. Two minutes later a free carriage stopped nearby; the driver stood proudly above his shiny top. The “Artist of Death” was not at all bothered by the fact that he was hanging out in plain sight on this chilly December evening. At the moment he even wanted to be seen; however, this would have been difficult - fog was quickly approaching the city from the Thames, surrounding the gas lamps with a luminous halo.

The "Artist" handed the driver eight pence and told him to take him to the Strand, to the Adelphi Theatre. Deftly making its way between the carriages crowding the street, dodging wheezing horses, the cab headed towards a crowd of well-dressed townspeople waiting to be allowed inside. Glowing letters above the entrance announced that today the theater was showing the acclaimed melodrama “The Corsican Brothers.” “The Artist of Death” was well acquainted with the play and could easily answer any question about it, especially regarding the unusual directorial move in the first two acts: the events in them unfolded sequentially, although in fact (and the viewer had to imagine it) they took place at the same time . In the first act, one of the brothers sees the ghost of his twin, and in the second, the viewer is shown in vivid colors how the twin is killed at that very moment. In the second half of the play, the surviving brother takes revenge on the murderers, takes revenge cruelly, so that the stage is literally flooded with streams of fake blood. Many theater visitors were horrified by what they saw, but their righteous anger only contributed to the growth of the play's popularity.

The “Artist of Death” merged with the excited crowd and went inside with everyone else. The pocket watch showed twenty minutes past eight. The curtain will be raised in ten minutes. In the chaos of the foyer, he passed the clerk who was offering everyone the notes of the “Ghost Theme,” the melody heard in the play, opened a side door, walked a short distance along a fog-hidden alley and hid in the shadows behind a pile of boxes. He sat there for ten minutes, patiently waiting for someone to appear next.

I don't even know where to start...
No matter how banal it may sound (and in this case it was not readable), since I am sure many people have mentioned this, I will write that I love everything connected with the Victorian era. What did I like about this time..? Yes, most likely, comfort and riddles. How? - you ask. It's easy! I like the street lamps that illuminated the streets of those times, the paving stones, thanks to which the sound of hooves could be heard every now and then. Is it that simple? - Yes, it's that simple. Who doesn’t like high-quality photographs taken with professional SLR cameras of the streets of London, wet streets, benches, parks, illuminated by the same lanterns? I am sure that when you look at such photographs, it is the comfort that gives you pleasure. Perhaps this is stupid, because now the streets of many cities are being landscaped in the British style. They install similar lanterns in parks and lay mosaic tiles similar to paving stones. As for corrupt women, opium lovers and horrific murders, everything is much more complicated. The thought of this doesn’t make much of a nuisance, so to speak, of the comfort that is so pleasant to me, but there’s nothing to be done, that’s the harsh truth. I forgave the addiction to opium even of my favorite character, detective Sherlock Holmes, for all the moments that Conan Doyle gave me and allowed me to experience with this most popular hero. I also like that era because of the mysteries, as I mentioned above. Yes, that same Jack the Ripper and all derivatives of this nickname. Who isn’t attracted to riddles to which no one can fully guess the answer?
In this novel we are not talking about Jack, but about an even more terrible character who did not flinch even when killing toddlers wrapped in diapers. You see, I didn’t think that at my age any other book would make me feel a chill down my spine and trembling. My hands shook when I felt how easily HE commits these crimes. In the future, the author tells the fate of almost every already picturesquely described hero, and what’s worst is that even the murderer comes to your understanding. This is where I really went nuts! :)
I consider this novel to be a duel. A duel between two people - the author of a world-famous confession about addiction to opium and a maniacal killer. Each of them is sinful, but each of them is worthy of respect. Both want to warn humanity against harmful attacks (external: political and internal: struggle with consciousness). Both have their own methods. Someone will say that the methods are terrible, cruel, inhumane and I, in principle, agree with this, but at the same time I agree with the heroes. After killing innocent children, I thought I would never forgive the killer! That's how it happened, but I understand - I understood it. A good deed that bordered on a fine line with inhumanity, you had to follow the lead of the principles and instantly you stumbled and are flying into the abyss! I don't know how else to describe my position. Yes, the anti-hero is a scoundrel, an animal! But this is not what he wanted. Unfortunately or fortunately, I can’t say that. I am an egoist to turn a blind eye to such crimes, but the reason for which this was done... One person cannot correct it.
I especially liked the moment when De Quincey repaid the killer (so as not to spoil it!) in the same coin, asking for help from the old libertines. It was a very powerful scene. Thomas De Quincey, as it turned out, was no less cruel.
Okay, in conclusion, briefly about the main thing! The book is fantastic and after Stephen King's The Shining it went really well. Easy to read, you even catch yourself thinking that you don’t want to put it down to boil some tea. Five points! For me, this is the best book (of the new books I've read this year).

David Morrell

THE FINE ART OF DEATH

To Robert Morrison and Grevel Lindop, who guided my journey into the world of Thomas De Quincey.

Introduction

At first glance, it seems surprising that mid-Victorian England, famous for its primness, literally went crazy with a new genre of fiction - the detective novel. Wilkie Collins's 1860 novel The Woman in White marked the beginning of what Victorian critics termed "detective mania." She turned out to be akin to “a virus spreading in all directions” and satisfied “hidden, unhealthy desires.”

The roots of the new genre lie in the Gothic novels of the previous century, with the only difference being that detective authors place their heroes not in ancient gloomy castles, but in completely modern houses of familiar Victorian England. The darkness is not of supernatural origin. It nestles in the hearts of seemingly respectable citizens whose personal lives are full of terrifying secrets. Madness, incest, violence, blackmail, infanticide, arson, drug addiction, poisoning, sadomasochism and necrophilia - this is not a complete list of “skeletons in the closet” that, according to the authors, were hidden behind the external Victorian gloss.

Upon closer examination, it turns out that the craze for a new genre that brought dark secrets to the light of day was a natural reaction to the general secrecy characteristic of that time. It is difficult to even imagine to what extent the English middle and upper classes separated their private lives from their public ones and how carefully they hid their true feelings from outsiders. The common practice of keeping windows permanently curtained reflects very well the Victorian English attitude towards their home and private life: it is a sacred territory from which one can look out, but into which it is forbidden to look. Every house abounded in secrets; their presence was considered something taken for granted and did not concern any outsiders.

The scandalous, out-of-his-time Thomas De Quincey, whose theories about the supernatural predated Freud's teachings by seventy years, spoke about the general reserve and habit of hiding personal life: “Of one thing at least I am sure: the mind is incapable of forgetting; thousands of random events can and will create a veil between our consciousness and the secret writings of memory, and thousands of the same events, in turn, can tear that veil, but, one way or another, those writings are eternal; they are like stars that seem to hide before the ordinary light of day, but we know: the light is only a cover thrown over the luminaries of the night, and they wait to appear again until the day that eclipses them disappears itself.”

De Quincey became famous when he committed an act that was previously incredible: he exposed his personal life in the famous bestseller “Confessions of an Englishman who used opium.” William Burroughs later described it as "the first and still the best book on drug addiction."

De Quincey's eerie prose, especially the essay “Murder as One of the Fine Arts,” allows him to be called the founder of the detective genre. This work, shocking to the unprepared reader, sheds light on the famous murders on the Ratcliffe Highway, which in 1811 horrified the population of London and all of England. It is tempting to compare the effect of these crimes with the fear that gripped the East End of London at the end of the nineteenth century, in 1888, when Jack the Ripper committed several sensational murders. It turns out that the panic that followed the events on the Ratcliffe Highway was much more widespread. The reason is that these brutal massacres were the first of their kind, the news of which quickly spread throughout the country, thanks to the growing importance of newspapers (in London alone there were fifty-two in 1811) and the recently improved system of mail delivery by mail coaches. , which traveled all over England at a constant speed of ten miles per hour.

In addition, all those killed by the Ripper were prostitutes, while the victims of the Ratcliffe Highway murders were businessmen and their families. Only the “moths of the night” were afraid of Jack the Ripper, and literally every resident of London had reasons to fear the killer of 1811. Details of how the criminal dealt with his victims can be found in the first chapter of this story. To some they may seem shocking and disgusting, but everything is based on historical evidence.