Book Review: Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw

Greta Helsing inherited the family's highly specialized, and highly peculiar, medical practice. In her consulting rooms, Dr. Helsing treats the undead for a host of ills - vocal strain in banshees, arthritis in barrow-wights, and entropy in mummies. Although barely making ends meet, this is just the quiet, supernatural-adjacent life Greta's been groomed for since childhood.

Until a sect of murderous monks emerges, killing human and undead Londoners alike. As terror takes hold of the city, Greta must use her unusual skills to stop the cult if she hopes to save her practice, and her life.

My Review: 
Greta Helsing is following in the footsteps of her father as a Harley Street medic to the various monsters that live unseen in London. She is summoned to the home of famous Vampire friend Edmund Ruthven after his Vampyre friend Varney is attacked by a supernatural cult and badly injured. With London already in the grip of ripper murders that have the population in terror and her friends being targeted, Greta and her friends have to solve a mystery to save everybody in London. 

I was interested in this book from the moment I first heard about it and the cover art is very striking. I liked the idea of a Helsing being doctor to the vampires! I was concerned a little, as I don't like historical settings much and I wrongly thought with the mention of ripper murders that this was set during the Jack the Ripper murders, but it is in fact set in modern London so that pleased me! Greta is a great character. She has the same devotion to her career that her father had and is becoming well trusted in the monster world. Her Harley Street clinic is run down, her battered mini is on the verge of packing it in and somebody tries to kill her and her friends. It is not a happy time for her! I liked her because she was treating those that society would run screaming from and making her father proud, as well as being the kind of person you want as a friend.

The other characters were brilliant. Ruthven is one of the leaders of the community, liked and trusted by the monster underground and with contacts among all species. He is a kind vampire who is protective of Greta and cares about what is happening in London. Edmund is also very  unhappy about a book written by John Polidori about him which is factually inaccurate, labelling him as a vampyre rather than a traditional vampire as there are two distinct species. His friend Sir Francis Varney is the vampyre, a lunar sensitive who is allergic to all but virgin blood and can be resurrected in the moonlight if killed. I liked finding out about the differences between the two and seeing the difficulty that it causes Greta when treating her patients. Varney was attacked by monks wielding silver tipped spikes who ambushed him in his flat, and was lucky to escape. This is where Greta meets him for the first time.

Greta is determined to find out who is attacking humans and monsters alike in her city. Along with Edmund and Varney, they seek help from demon friend Fass, who has friends in very low places, a tribe of ghouls in the sewers and human museum contact August Cranswell. I loved the whole group dynamic as they worked togeher to find a way to stop the monks and discover what is really happening. We also briefly see Greta's co-workers-Dez, a witch and Anna who is part rusalka. I thought both women were interesting but we didn't see much of them in the story. Hopefully we'll get more about them in coming books and widen the group to include them. I like seeing different species and personalities working together to solve a mystery or defeat bad guys!

Along with the good character development, there is plenty of action to keep the reader interested and I felt like there was always something going on. There were touches of humour, tense scenes, attack sequences and it all worked well together to be an entertaining urban fantasy read. I very much look forward to reading the next book which I already own!

Read August 2018. 
4 stars.