The Butcher's Hook

a dark and twisted tale of Georgian London

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The Butcher's Hook

By: Janet Ellis

Narrated by: Janet Ellis

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About this listen

***LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2016***

'KNOWS HOW TO KEEP HER AUDIENCE HOOKED' The Times
'A MASTERFUL STORYTELLER' Clare Mackintosh
'DARK, WEIRD AND GLORIOUSLY FEMINIST' Elle

Georgian London, in the summer of 1763.
At nineteen, Anne Jaccob, the elder daughter of well-to-do parents, meets Fub the butcher's apprentice and is awakened to the possibilities of joy and passion.
Anne lives a sheltered life: her home is a miserable place and her parents have already chosen a more suitable husband for her than Fub.
But Anne is an unusual young woman and is determined to pursue her own happiness in her own way...
...even if that means getting a little blood on her hands.

'A SHARP EYE AND A SHARPER WIT' Guardian
'A SPIRITED, DARK DEBUT' Woman & Home
'STRANGE, DARK AND UTTERLY MESMERIC' Hannah Kent

*And Janet Ellis's second, darkly compelling novel, How It Was, is out now*©2016 Janet Ellis

Janet EllisJanet EllisJohn Murray

Crime Fiction

Historical

Mystery

Suspense

Thriller & Suspense

Fiction

Crime

England

Crime Fiction Historical Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense Fiction Crime England

Critic reviews

Janet Ellis's appealing debut novel is like a cross between Fanny Burney's Evelina and US crime drama Dexter... Ellis excels at the poetics of flesh. She writes with a keen eye for the texture of skin and the meat beneath. She vividly describes the slaughter of a calf, the wet thwack of the knife, the cleaving of muscle from bone, the hot rush of blood. Anne, we come to realise, is something of a sociopath. This is where The Butcher's Hook gets really interesting ... There's a wit and a richness to the writing, a nice way with pastiche, and a real feel for the macabre. And, in Anne, she has created an engaging and at times daringly amoral heroine.

Ellis has a public personality of great charm, and a good deal of this gets into her writing... she revels in the historical details, has a grasp of pace and knows how to keep her audience hooked

The Butcher's Hook doesn't read like a first novel - it is a high-finish performance. Its heroine is an 18th-century teenage girl, who starts demurely although her sex drive turns out to be anything but demure. You need to be braced for violence to rival any Jacobean tragedy: The Butcher's Hook will hook you.

This author remains one to watch. She has a sharp eye and a sharper wit. More importantly still, she possesses a subtle and compassionate understanding of the human heart

A strange, unsettling story

This is a dark, weird, gloriously feminist story of a girl in 1763 pushing against the limits of her role and a dark love story.

A story of dispassionate, bloody brilliance rich in believable period detail

Actress and former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis has created a surprising blend of psychological thriller and revenge tragedy in her debut novel... In Vanity Fair, Thackeray demonstrated how society determines character, and this suggestion underlies Ellis's robust and textured vision of the Georgian mindset. But from it emerges an unsettling portrait of a deeply damaged individual whose capacity for creating mayhem is timeless

A gripping girl-power story

Ellis weaves her tale with deft skill, striking imagery and a boldness rare in a first novel

The debut novel from the ex-Blue Peter presenter is a doozy

Janet Ellis has written one of the most hotly-tipped debuts of 2016

Former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis has burst on to the literary scene with a bodice-ripping thriller... Ellis evokes the sights, sounds and smells of Georgian London and turns a telling phrase that captures on 18th-century cadence

Anne Jaccob is the audacious heroine of this dark, historical debut from former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis

Dark, packed with surprises and with a feisty unforgettable heroine, this is a top-class debut (Fanny Blake)

Most relevant

Well, I did not expect this. The anti heroine in this story is thoroughly evil to the reader but to her, her terrible deeds are carried out in an amoral kind of way. This makes the story even darker and actually rather unpleasant. The story is very well written and Janet Ellis has a lovely way of using unusual similes. The beauty of her language is often in stark contrast to the awful crimes that are described in a "matter of fact" manner . The story is visceral and at times hard to listen to without grimacing but one is somehow compelled to carry on rather as one does when watching a horror movie where we watch through slightly parted fingers.
Janet Ellis narrates her story extremely well and knows exactly how to put her tale across. Some of the characters have rather Dickensian names such as 'Fub' and 'Onions' but it worked for Dickens.... and it works here.

This is definitely not for the faint hearted.Who would imagine that a charming former Blue Peter presenter could come up with something like this? Crikey. Readers - prepare for shocks galore and some sexually explicit scenes. I would not say I 'enjoyed' this as that is entirely the wrong word. I felt like a helpless onlooker and was actually pretty horrified and disgusted in turns. So a challenging read if you are up for it .