Anatomy of a Heretic - David Mark

Although he is better known for writing contemporary crime thrillers in his DS McAvoy series, somehow David Mark appears to be quite at home in another century. As cold and corrupt as the modern world in the environs of Hull might seem, the dark recesses of human behaviour, corrupted flesh and descent into madness and violence are ideally suited to the dark, fetid seventeenth century prison cells, filthy alleys, backstreet brothels and foul living quarters of sailing ships of Anatomy of a Heretic. Mark doesn't need any excuse to depict such a world of horror, but given free reign to let his imagination run wild he definitely makes the most of it.

The book's prologue indeed opens with just such a scene, one that lives up to the book's title and then some. We witness the dissection of the corpse of a woman for an anatomy lesson in the year 1628, only it's from the point of view of the woman lying on the table under the knife. Someone has gone to great pains to make it looks like she is dead and had her delivered to the Guild of Anatomists in Haarlem, where helplessly she is conscious of her body being opened, her skin peeled back and heart removed. Who is that someone who has devised such a terrible fate, what has the woman done to deserve it, and what other horrors is he capable of inflicting on his enemies?

In Amsterdam in the same year we meet Jeronimus Cornelisz, an apothecary who consorts with men of power and influence; dangerous men like Torremtius who hold heretical Rosicrucian views that have seen him imprisoned for holding depraved bacchanals. Others like Speelman Nacht demand favours in return for services rendered, such as the unwitting procurement of a live subject by the anatomists of Haarlem. Nacht wants a young woman Zwaantie transported for protection to the Indies and he is to accompany her on board the Batavia. Cornelisz sees an opportunity that can be turned to further his own dark ambitions as the ruler of a new world of death and unimaginable cruelty.

Meanwhile in London. Nicolaes de Pelgrom is rescued from prison by her uncle, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, an important man close to royalty. The bastard son of John Villiers and a tavern keeper's daughter, Nicolaes has been imprisoned for his own heretical practices as a follower of mystic and alchemist, Dr Lambe. He has a chance to redeem himself, preferably out of the country, as to that end it has been arranged for him to go to the Indies in the role of an assassin to avenge the murder of Englishmen tortured and executed by deceit in a dispute between Dutch and British companies involved in the East India Company spice trade.

It's not just Jeronimus Cornelisz and Nicolaes de Pelgrom who are making the journey to the Indies, but another passenger aboard the Batavia is an elegant lady called Lucretia on her way to join her husband in the far East. There appears to be more to her than most suspect, and even Cornelisz who believes he is on top of the situation may be underestimating her. Put such figures all together aboard the Batavia, where few of them what they seem, and anything can happen. It looks like developing into a battle of wits between competing forces aboard a ship that is a container of violence, pestilence, madness and lust, but with evil intent manipulating events, there is no way of knowing how things will play out. Other than the certainty that in the hands of David Mark it's going to be very bad indeed for all involved.

And indeed, it's not long before chaos reigns, disrupting the plans of soldiers, assassins, nobles, and madmen. The removal from our contemporary period and civilisation also allows Mark to remove his characters from almost any moral constraints, taking Conrad's path in the Heart of Darkness to explore what can happen when people are manipulated by and left in the hands of a charismatic madman. It's not pretty, but it's probably not that far removed from a recognisable reality either. While you can at least expect some satisfaction that those people will pay for their behaviour by time we come to the conclusion, it won't be before they have done a great deal of harm and you can practically guarantee from subsequent history that there will be another tyrant just waiting to take their place.

So although it's in a different period entirely and there are fewer broad shoulders of comfort for the reader to see a way out of the darkness - no real equivalent of DS McAvoy here - that kind of notion still keeps Anatomy of a Heretic recognisably within the familiar themes of David Mark's superb contemporary crime fiction series. What makes the horror just that little more endurable is of course the always evocative writing from a true poet of the darkness who is not afraid to push his work into some very dark and uncomfortable places.

Reading notes: Anatomy of a Heretic by David Mark is published by Head of Zeus (21st Jan 2022). Reviewed from Kindle edition.