One Line Summary

After Burke hangs and Hare vanishes, two women tied to Edinburgh’s most notorious murders attempt to disappear, until a journalist’s pursuit threatens to exhume the past.

Opening Impression

Mrs Burke & Mrs Hare reframes a familiar Victorian horror with chilling restraint, shifting the focus from infamy to survival in a city still echoing with fear and moral reckoning.

Synopsis

In the aftermath of the Burke and Hare murders, Lucky and Nelly flee Scotland under assumed identities. Years later, rumours of their survival surface in London, drawing the attention of ambitious journalist Duncan Fletcher.

As Duncan pursues the truth through taverns, print shops, and guarded silences, new violence suggests the past has not finished with them.

Analysis

Structure: Dual timelines converge with clarity, sustaining tension through psychology rather than spectacle.

Characterisation: Complicity and fear sit alongside ambition and moral blindness.

Style: Economical prose rich in period texture.

Themes: Guilt, reinvention, and who history allows to disappear.

Verdict

Mrs Burke & Mrs Hare is an unsettling and intelligent work of historical crime that lingers for its moral weight as much as its suspense.