The Bloodless Soldier

With the success of the Companion Chronicle, The Mahogany Murderers, it wasn’t long before Big Finish announced a box set of full-cast audios featuring the investigators of infernal incidents, Jago and Litefoot.  I have listened to this box set once before and, to be honest, I was a little underwhelmed.  I don’t really know why, but I’m up for a re-evaluation and plunged into this first adventure, The Bloodless Soldier, with aplomb.

The plot is fairly straightforward and it more serves as a platform to set up the main players and setting for this series.  Obviously we have Jago and Litefoot, but they are also joined by Bernice Summerfield as Ellie Higson (given far more to do here than in the Companion Chronicle) and Conrad Asquith as Sergeant Quick (a minor character from The Talons of Weng-Chiang, also played in that story by Asquith).  Ellie is relatively central to this story, as her brother – a soldier returning from the Empire – is involved in the mystery presented to Jago and Litefoot.  Quick is a link to the various crimes which begin these mysteries, bringing various corpses to the attention of Professor Litefoot at the mortuary.

A small group of soldiers has returned to England from India, but their captain is an unwell man.  It turns out he has been scratched by some monster and has, effectively, become a werewolf of some sort.  It is all a little vague and unexplained as, aside from a small scene at the beginning.  A character from India arrives, Sunil (played by John Banks) to explain a little more; there is some stuff about a monster which survives on blood and tops itself up on unsuspecting humans – but I never really felt like the ‘explanation’ was fully explored.

The soldiers, unfortunately, all sound rather similar and I did find it difficult to tell them apart.  John Banks is here again as Private Higson (Ellie’s brother), with Robin Bowerman (Lisa’s brother – confusing, eh?) as Corporal Lorton, Alex Lowe as Private Michaels and Alex Mallinson as Private Smith.  Scenes involve various combinations of them with the ‘monster’; their former Captain (again played by John Banks, but it’s mostly growling).  From scene to scene, I started to get a bit lost as to who was who and doing what.  Eventually, Michaels heads off with the monster to try and make some money and Higson dies at its claws trying to protect Jago and Litefoot.

With the vague back story and an interchangeable guest cast, this is, to be honest, a bit of a step down from The Mahogany Murderers.  It doesn’t help that ‘werewolves’ have been done to death a little in genre fiction and nothing new is done with them her, aside from add in a less than interesting, vampiric ability.  The plot is basically: find a dead body with animal-like wounds; track it down; realise its actually a human; do away with it; the end.  It is too similar to many others of its ilk.

On the plus side, the dimension of Ellie’s brother being involved and ultimately sacrificing himself adds some interest.  It’ll be interesting to see if this is picked up later in the series as Higson dies at the hands of Jago when he is forced to shoot him, implored by Higson, to prevent a full transformation.  Jago and Litefoot are also the highlight of this story with their characters being explored a little more and some progression in their friendship is allowed to occur.  I particularly liked Christopher Benjamin’s scenes immediately after shooting Higson which showed a side of Jago – the juxtaposition of his cowardice with his desire to do the right thing by those he loves -hinted at in Talons but obviously due to be explored a little more in this series.

Atmosphere-wise, Victorian London (or at least the ‘romantic’ interpretation of it, is well-realised in the soundscape and whilst this is never going to be regarded as a pinnacle of the series, it is at least, a satisfactory beginning which establishes the regular cast and hints at some developments to come  I think it’s telling that I’ve waited a few days before finding the will to write up this review, so I’m hoping that the later episodes are more inspirational.