And did he really have to call his Welsh coalminers' village Collier, and one of his London detectives Hammersmith? It's a shame his research didn't extend to his dialogue, however, which is peppered with anachronisms ('no worries' 'He's gonna hurt me'). And he's a dab hand at fearsomely gruesome murders and autopsies. He has done well, then, to summon up such an atmospheric, disturbing vision of the city at the end of the 19th century, from the match girl killed by phosphorus poisoning to the horrors of the workhouse. The American author, who previously created the graphic novel series Proof, 'remarkably never visited London before or during the writing of The Yard', boasts his publisher. He opened a door to certain deranged possibilities and there will be more like him.' Others like him circled like lions around the herd. Saucy Jack had gifted them all the idea of himself.

'Whether he was gone or not, it hardly mattered. Or perhaps the Ripper was dead and gone, having destroyed the confidence of The Yard and of the citizens who no longer trusted The Yard to protect them,' he writes. 'The Ripper was out there somewhere in the grey city.

He handles their disbelief, their horror, that another serial killer could be plaguing London in the wake of the Ripper, very well. Grecian switches between the perspectives of his bald killer, nervously watching the police on his tail and offing anyone who stumbles upon his secret, and those of various policemen on the trail of a tangled array of criminals. But can they find the killer before more people die? The new man on the Yard's murder squad, Walter Day, just up from Devon, is put on the grisly case, with the help of forensic science pioneer Dr Bernard Kingsley. When the body of a Scotland Yard detective is found in a trunk, his lips and eyes sewn shut, and a series of bearded men are found brutally murdered, their faces neatly shaved, it looks like at least one more serial killer is on the loose.

The Yard by Alex Grecian