Book Log 2015 #18: The Returned by Jason Mott

When ABC cancelled Resurrection, it left viewers (myself included) at a point where the worldwide phenomenon of people returning from the dead was an accepted fact, but tinged by the possibility that a baby born to one of them was a harbinger of evil. Wanting to know how this all played out, I picked up this book, on which the series was based.

And, not surprisingly, the book is only tangentially related to the series. It's still about people who return from the dead, but the story is more focused on the central returnee - the boy who returns decades after his drowning - and the town's reaction to the returners. It's a more personal story, which makes sense given that Mott wrote it in the wake of his mother's death, with a premise of what he would do if she returned to life for one day.

It's not a bad book, but my disappointment in how different it was from the TV series may be coloring my judgement. I did find some of the characters a little too broadly drawn, which I may also have found more troubling given how the TV show had more time to develop them.

(Popsugar Reading Challenge: a book based on or turned into a TV show)

Book Log 2015 #17: The Devil's Workshop by Alex Grecian

Inspector Walter Day and Sergeant Neville Hammersmith are back, representing Scotland Yard's Murder Squad in an investigation into a mysterious jail break using a train. As the duo (and the rest of the squad) track down the four escapees, it becomes clear that there's something larger going on involving some of London's most respectable men, and that there was a fifth escapee - one well known to London for his "ripping" murders.

Not sure if it was too early to play the Jack the Ripper card, but I did like the way he was introduced into the series. I was also hoping for a little more of the internal working of the Murder Squad that was in the first book. The subplot involving Day and his mentor did at least fill some of that gap.

Also notable is that Day's wife finally has her baby, meaning that the first three books took place in the span of six months, tops. London in the 1890s was even more dangerous than I originally thought.