This is a tough thriller, a delicate love story and a powerfully evocative historical novel. At its heart is a young man's obsession with the mother he lost under horrendous, bizarre circumstances. Set in Edinburgh at a time in which the city was at the vanguard of medical advance, Morgan reveals the deep moral dilemmas that accompanied meaningful research at the time. Her descriptions of Edinburgh's Old Town, decaying, corrupt and dangerous, are extraordinarily vivid. Lives were cheap, both within and out of the medical faculty.
Morgan is a confident, courageous and honest writer. Fleshmarket is a tour de force, from its attention-grabbing prologue onwards.
Novel beginnings are seldom more dramatic or more grim than the first 10 pages of Nicola Morgan's Fleshmarket. This is sweat-on-the-forehead stuff. In the startling introduction to her story, Morgan, an uncompromising writer who doesn't believe in holding back, takes you straight to the painful centre of what is to follow and leaves you gasping.
Fleshmarket is well and truly a book that thrills, but behind the rip-roaring plot there is a painful truth that none of us should ever forget. This is an important book that lives up to the expectations of its evocative title and dramatic cover. Stories don't come any more powerful than this.
* Sunday Young Post *Nicola lives near Edinburgh with her husband, two daughters, and a dog. After obtaining a degree in Classics and Philosophy, her various past jobs have included, cooking business lunches and plucking turkeys. She worked as an English teacher for 16 years and has promoted child literacy for many years. She has written over 65 non-fiction titles, including some for Hodder Wayland, but achieved a 21 year old ambition when her first and critically acclaimed novel, Mondays Are Red, was published as a Signature title by Hodder in 2001.
Nicola's favourite pastimes are reading, glass-painting, creating mosaics and cooking. She hates gardening, but likes nothing better than to sit in a beautifully tended one..