Strange Beasts
Susan J. Morris
Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 9781959411642
Bindery Press, October 2024, 384 pages

Greetings, readers, and welcome back to another book review! This month we’re heading to early nineteenth-century France for a mysterious tale of ghosts and goblins, werewolves and witchy women, magic and mayhem and the occasional rat in lipstick and eyeshadow (applied humanely, of course). That’s right, we’re reading Strange Beasts, Susan J. Morris’ debut novel, and reading it felt like I had been transported back into another time.

The first thing that caught my interest with Strange Beasts is the plot itself. This is a story that draws heavily from the lore of Bram Stoker and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in a way that shows Morris obviously cares deeply about the original material she’s drawing inspiration from, but also cleverly weaves in new elements to create a brand new universe. In Strange Beasts, Samantha Harker, daughter of the slayers of Dracula, Mina and Jonathan Harker, works as a researcher in the archives of The Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena (a classic adventure society if I’ve ever heard of one) but finds herself drawn to fieldwork in order to solve the mystery of her disappeared grandfather. Unfortunately for Sam (or perhaps fortunately?), the person she must partner with to solve a case of grisly murders rocking the fashionable streets of 1903 Paris is Dr. Helena Moriarty, the daughter of Professor Moriarty (slayer of Sherlock Holmes), and widely reviled within the Society for the aura of death that seems to follow her (and has seen three previous partners dead already). To make matters worse, Jakob Van Helsing, son of the famed adventurer and a fellow Society member, is convinced that Sam is showing signs of diabolical powers and is determined to make sure she stays pure or dies a monster.

Whew. Now you know what kind of book you’re getting into, and I promise you that if classic suspense murder mysteries are your jam, this one does not disappoint. Morris does an excellent job of making Strange Beasts feel like an old-timey pulp adventure tale while still keeping everything incredibly fresh and relatable to the modern world, and there’s a delightful mix of period-specific dialogue and mores contrasted with how oppressive we’ve since learned those shackles can be. The underlying subtext of a woman’s right to choose what is done with her life, let alone her body, feels especially pertinent in today’s environment, and I was constantly impressed at how Morris was able to keep the momentum of a fairly intricate plot moving forward without letting it bog down into minutiae.

This leads me to the second thing that I really enjoyed about Strange Beasts, and it’s that it is a murder mystery where I felt like I knew what was going on, but I was never quite sure, which is a difficult balancing act to accomplish. Breadcrumbs are scattered liberally throughout the book, some true, some not, and the final reveals and denouement flowed naturally from everything that came before in a way that confirmed some of my suspicions while still leaving room for surprise. While I don’t think Strange Beasts feels exactly like a classic Sherlock tale, I think it is all the better for that, since Morris allows her characters to breathe and expand in a way that makes everything her own creation, and allows her to subvert some expectations the reader might naturally assume.

Finally, I want to take a moment to touch on the worldbuilding in Strange Beasts, because it is exquisite. Morris takes the time to regale us with detailed descriptions that never cross the line into stilted prose, and it makes everything around the characters sing. Whether it’s an unexpectedly interrupted carriage ride through the English countryside, the smell and texture of fresh-baked bread in a shabby pauper’s house, or the moldering remains of generations trapped in the catacombs beneath the cobblestones of Paris, Morris has put in the effort to ensure that for all the unknown machinations driving everyone forward, we as readers know exactly where we stand in terms of surroundings. I cannot emphasize enough that as an extremely non-visual reader (I see words in my head, not pictures), the way that Morris presents her scenes is top-notch, and absolutely paints a picture that is almost impossible to ignore.

Overall, even if you don’t feel like you’re the type of person who would like “historically” oriented fiction (and I generally count myself among that number), I encourage you to check out Strange Beasts. It’s written with heart, with love, and with a clear eye towards what has come before and how it might come to be again. Morris has built something greater upon the bones of those who came before her, and I can’t wait to see what she has lined up next in this universe for Sam and Hel.