Mike Mignola's comic book universe based around Hellboy and the BPRD is a fine and amazing thing, but this is an unusually distinctive entry that stands out a bit. 1881, and Sir Edward Grey, England's official Witchfinder, is dispatched to the town of Hallam to investigate the odd death of a Crown official. At first disgruntled at what he perceives to be a mundane murder mystery, he soon finds himself attacked by giant eels, and so starts to feel right at home. Hallam is the source of a popular health tonic, a model industrial town reclaimed from the marshes. naturally there are all sorts of evil goings-on going on, secrets and mysteries and monsters for Grey to explore unravel and fight.

It all has the feel of a wonderfully British period gothic Hammer horror. There's a terrific and loving attention to detail, with glimpses of life in a town dredged from ancient marshes and propelled to a glorious and progressive future by a reforming baron of industry. The cylinders of instructive music played to the workers in the factory, the penny dreadful version of the constable's suspicions, the touches of local dialect, successfully used without mocking or demeaning the speaker and effortlessly touching on tensions between class and education, and eels, lots and lots of eels. It also has a rather bleak sting at the end, a vision of the glorious future everyone's heading towards, and tying in with later evens in the Mignolaverese too, I think.

A splendidly entertaining read that can be enjoyed without much reference to other titles in series, but why deny yourself the pleasure? It's a lot of fun, even if this is a particularly rich and satisfying example.