Lord John and the Hellfire Club

Author: Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Novella, Historical, Mystery
Rating: C

In "Lord John and the Hellfire Club" Lord John Grey (of the famed Outlander series) witnesses the murder of one Robert Gerald, the cousin of Grey’s friend and colleague, Harry Quarry.  Even before rumours begin to circulate about Gerald’s sexuality Grey had vowed to find the murderer, a search which brings Grey to the Hellfire Club, where the story becomes more about the danger that threatens Grey’s life than discovering who murdered Gerald.

I was actually rather disappointed by this story.  Going into it I understood that it was a novella and that Diana Gabaldon had never written a novella before, but this still really didn’t meet my expectations.  The detail that you can expect in one of her books is still there, but because of the brevity of the story itself this actually takes away from things.  When writing a novella there is a word count, and unlike in books when you can simply add pages (or divide books into two parts, à la George R.R. Martin) if you surpass that count your work is going to be cut.  Thus, in order to add details Gabaldon has to take away from other elements – in this case, she deprives the plot.  Everything happens too quickly and too easily, and without any real depth to it.   Furthermore, the suspense of the story is somewhat diminished by the fact that this novella is a prequel of sorts; any fan of the Outlander series knows that Grey appears in books set after this novella, thus when his life is endangered there’s a large “meh” element to it.  I’m not worried about whether or not Grey survives, because I know he has to.  I’m not even worried about him being grievously harmed or disfigured, or even if his reputation is tarnished and his secret exposed – I know it doesn’t happen.  Which is why all of that seems to be a large part of the suspense of the novella; Gabaldon wants readers to be asking what’s going to happen and if Grey is going to emerge from this story alive.  She seems to almost forget that we already know the answer.