The Figure in the Photograph

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Pub Date 23 Apr 2020 | Archive Date 18 May 2020

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Description

The first novel in a new gritty crime series set in late nineteenth century Scotland.

1898. Juan Camerón’s father is killed while working as a  photographer amidst the chaos of war in Cuba, but his last  pictures reveal a sinister truth to his final moments… 

Juan travels to Scotland to grieve with family and immerses  himself in the study of photography. When he invents a  device that inadvertently solves a crime, local law enforcement recruit him to help stop a brutal serial killer plaguing the streets of Glasgow.

The first novel in a new gritty crime series set in late nineteenth century Scotland.

1898. Juan Camerón’s father is killed while working as a photographer amidst the chaos of war in Cuba, but his...


Available Editions

EDITION Hardcover
ISBN 9780749025311
PRICE £16.99 (GBP)

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Average rating from 25 members


Featured Reviews

Really enjoyed this book. Some early reviews made me question its prose, but I found the pacing really good as our narrator Juan Cameron is a photographer and the writing reminds me of how a photographer looks at things, picking up a lot of details we might miss. And that is basically the premise of this book. Juan and his father are sent to photographs architecture in Cuba right as the Spanish-American War began. Due to tragedy Juan ends up inheriting land in Cuba and Scotland where he returns. He helps police to solve a murder by the use of his camera which photographs shots of daily life at a regular interval and then can try and discern patterns that might help determine the identity of the killer.

From here he is sent to Glasgow to help their police solve a group of serial killings. He sets up his camera in two locations, with autotimer device, and from there can get an idea of who might be the killer. I know some have stopped reading the book, but I just found it an interesting use of photography and the plot gets better and better the further into the book. Who might be involved? A minister, policeman, hotel owner, store owner, etc. the list of possibly suspects is long and the ending is very well done. Having recently read Dickens and “I, Claudius” this book was a breeze for me. Very well done, I really enjoyed the plot, the characters, and the settings in Cuba and Scotland in the 1890’s. Thanks to NetGalley, as well as Allison & Busby for the free copy of this book in return for my honest review.

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Kevin Sullivan's The Figure in the Photograph is a great addition to the body of historical mysteries. At the book's opening, a peripatetic, father-son team of photographers is in Cuba during the Spanish-American war photographing historic buildings likely to be slated for destruction.

When the father is killed, his son, Juan Camarón, travels to Scotland to deliver their photographs to their publisher. By chance he becomes involved in the invention of a new type of camera: one that can be set up to take a series of six pictures of a single location at regular intervals. Camarón, called Cameron in Scotland, helps solve a murder using this new technique to monitor the scene of a crime, and, as a result, is invited to work with the police in an attempt to capture a serial killer who has been active in a Glasgow slum.

That's the set up, and I leave the rest of the story for readers to enjoy unraveling for themselves.

What I want to say is that not only is this title an engaging read—it would make a solid first volume in an ongoing series, which I hope will be the case. The characters are well-drawn and complex, not stereotypes of their era, but also not inappropriately "modern" as can be the case in historical mysteries. Besides Camarón, there are several other characters worth retaining and working into future volumes.And, at the close of this novel, Camarón is thinking of leaving still photography to become in the new technology of film (the movie kind). This opens up all sorts of possibilities for new adventures—I hope they are forthcoming.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the Publisher via NetGalley. The opinions are my own.

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As this book focuses on photography, it’s interesting to know some exciting new technologies of the era (no, I don’t plan to do this for every historical book I read):
- more or less ‘modern’ typewriters made by Remington in 1873 where the writer could see what he typed
- 1878 – Heat ripening of gelatine emulsions is discovered. This greatly increases sensitivity and makes possible very short "snapshot" exposures.
- 1888 - Kodak made the first ‘easy to use’ box-camera and 10 years later the first folding camera
- 1889 – The first commercially available transparent celluloid roll film is introduced by the Eastman Company,
- The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison. Alexander Graham Bell made several improvements in the 1880s and introduced the graphophone.
- On March 7, 1876, Bell was granted a telephone patent A few days later, he made the first-ever telephone call to Watson
- It’s also the time that the first experimental moving pictures are made. At the end of the book, Juan contemplates following this direction.
- Also invented in different places are several mechanisms that increase the efficiency of automatic rifles.

1897
Cuba is in turmoil because of rebels fighting for independence against the Spanish government troops. A few months later the Spanish-American war breaks out and Cuba will be occupied by the Americans. The photographers Juan Camaron and his father travel around the island on horseback. They’re commissioned to photograph and document the island’s buildings by a Scottish company and have done this for 2 years. They also make portraits of people when asked to do so. At the same time, his grandfather left them a plantation on the island that’s managed by a cousin. When the war breaks out they’re staying at this farm. When his father, his cousin and the cousin's unpleasant wife all died in the hostilities, Juan decides to sell the property. From the notary, he finds out that -through his Scottish mother- he also inherits a piece of land on the Isle of Bute in the Firth of Clyde in western Scotland.
When he’s in Glasgow, Juan is introduced to Dr Harrison who talks about the outbreak of the plague in the city. This took place in 1900, so 2 years after he was in Cuba. So the events of the book should be dated later than the epidemic.
In Scotland, he befriends Morton, an associate of the Cuban notary and an inventor. They discover something important; that events can be understood through photographs when you take 2 or more photos on 1 spot and compare them. It’s a whole new manner of looking at the world. They start to experiment with this idea and it’s amazing what they can learn from comparing the pictures of the same scene taken at different times. They call it serial photography His method is not based on capturing everything that happens or catching the criminal in his act but it is based on patterns of what might have happened in the great stretches of time and activity that have not been recorded, of the environment in which a crime is committed and extrapolate valuable information from that. With the help of the technical director of Morton’s typewriter company they even produce an automatic camera with a timer. The photos taken during one of those experiments help solve a murder. Not long after this success, the police ask for his help. In an unfavourable neighbourhood of Glasgow, there have been 5 gruesome murders and one lucky escape in 6 months. All victims were found in a very small area, an ideal situation to rig up some of Juan’s new cameras.

Apart from the background stories and family history, it takes a large section of the book to explain the details of the discoveries and inventions of this new practice. But I think it’s necessary for the first book in a series to offer this background to remain realistic. The technical explanations slow down the narrative a bit, but this didn’t feel like a negative experience and it even was fairly interesting. I’d classify the book as historical fiction with a murder mystery as an extra asset.
As the occupation of the main character is photographer, it’s no surprise that the descriptions of scenes and the details within them are very visual. You can see the picture develop right before your eyes and when Juan compares one frame with the next it’s almost as if you’re watching a movie. And it’s not a modern HD motion picture that I imagine, but the time-proper sepia coloured historical photos be it of a building, a street-scene, a portrait of the wealthy or a poorer bystander caught in his daily activities. After all, Juan is still working with the glass plates, before the celluloid film became widely available. Somewhere in the book, he tells that it’s not the camera’s that weigh so much but the glass plates. Those are of course breakable and are costly. The first can’t be helped but Juan cut the costs by using separate sections of 1 plate for different photos. I’m not an expert and can’t comment on the reality and possibility level of his discoveries and improvements, but to me, they do sound plausible.
I enjoyed this book from start to end, the first chapters move a bit slow in order to sketch the circumstances and background of the main character and how he came to be involved with the murder inquiry in Scotland. This character is extremely sympathetic and I sincerely hope this is the first book in a long series as I’m very curious as to how things in his life will evolve. There is the inheritance on the isle of Bute and also the hope on a blossoming love affair.
I thank NetGalley and Allison & Busby for the ARC, this is my unbiased and honest review.

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The protagonist of this murder mystery novel is Juan Camerón, the son of a Cuban-born, Spanish photographer and a Scottish mother. The story begins in Cuba where Juan and his father are travelling to photograph the island’s significant buildings which they have been commissioned to do by the Scottish publishing company, William Collins Sons & Co.

This, however, is the Cuba of the Spanish American war of 1898. The pair become caught up in the dangers and turmoil of the times and this leads to the death of Juan’s father while photographing the Cathedral in the city of Santiago during its bombardment by American forces. Juan develops the last photographic plates exposed by his father before his death and learns from them that he had been murdered. It appears that the motive for the murder was that Juan’s father had inherited the plantation that was being managed by the cousins that the pair were staying with while in Santiago. The cousins are themselves killed in the bombardment and Juan is able in time, despite the disruption, to claim and dispose of his inheritance before returning to Europe.

Juan travels to Scotland in order to finalise his father’s last commission with his publisher, William Collins Sons & Co. While he is there he develops the his idea, gained from his examination of his father’s last photographs, that it is possible to learn things from a series of photographs taken of the same view over time that an observer at the scene would not notice. He helps develop a camera for just this purpose and, while testing the machine, inadvertently produces a series of photographs of a crime scene. His detailed examination of these enables him to provide evidence to the police that leads to the solving of a murder. This success leads him to being called in by the police in Glasgow trying to track down a serial killer at work in the city’s slums. There then follows a frantic effort to identify and detain the murderer.

This is an effective and well thought out murder mystery and the idea of using a photographic technique as part of a police investigation is an interesting one and allows the author to evoke a sense of Victorian Glasgow at the height of its industrial power and prestige and the scientific innovation and engineering skills that its success was built upon. The only real problem with this idea lies in the fact that the process and method that Juan has developed is inherently repetitive. The reader witnesses Juan setting up his camera, developing the photographic plates and analysing their contents several times over and there is also the problem of how Juan is to spend his time while he waits for the timed photographs to be taken over the course of the day.

Add to that the fact that we are introduced to Juan through the recounting of his experiences in Cuba and one can understand why for some readers this novel might seem a little slow in terms of the pace of the action. Personally, I did feel the plot could have moved faster in the middle of the novel but that it did repay perseverance and delivered a strong and surprising ending. The characters are engaging and well-drawn, the plot does hold the readers attention and the historical settings are evoked and described well. I enjoyed this novel very much and, as I suspect there are enough unresolved plot lines to suggest this may be the first of a series of novels, I look forward to reading of more of Juan’s adventures in the future.

I would like to express my thanks to NetGalley and Allison & Busby for making a free download of this book available to me.

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I took me a bit to be involved in this story as I found the beginning a bit slot but once I was hooked I couldn't put it down.
I liked the well researched and vivid historical background, the well thought cast of characters and the plot that flow.
The mystery is solid and kept me guessing.
I look forward to reading other instalment in this series.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

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1898. Juan Cameron's father, a photographer, is on assignment in Cuba to photograph the architecture, when he is killed during the war. In his last photographs his killer is revealed. But Juan travels to Scotland to deliver the remaining photographs. Having several weeks to wait for a meeting he invents a device allowing time lapse photography, which inadvertently helps solves a crime. On hearing of this Sergeant Macarthur involves him in the investigation of a series of brutal killings in Glasgow. Cameras placed in two locations with photographs taken at regular intervals may give the police a list of suspects to investigate
Quite a slow paced story but overall an interesting one with its plot and characters.

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