Reviewed:
There's a darkness in Mr. Hyde's "The Grantham Clinic," and it works on two levels.
The first is the obvious: For three years, a number of pretty British school girls have gone missing, abducted by a "doctor" at the titular clinic who mentally reconditions them into submissive sex toys and sells them around the globe to those who can afford such services.
The second is a bit more subversive. "The Grantham Clinic" reads a lot like a TV police procedural, with a detective sergeant and his constable girlfriend doggedly following clues to the latest abduction, eventually teaming with a Scotland Yard inspector who's the only one to have suspected a more sinister connection among the crimes.
We've been conditioned to know for whom to root in this kind of story. At first, it's easy to judge the good guys from the bad. But at the same time, it's deliciously nasty fun to watch the descent of the innocent young girls into insatiable, obedient sluts.
In the end, good-and-evil and heroes-and-villains all become a bit subjective, and no one touched by the doings at the Grantham Clinic escapes being imbued with a touch of darkness. But that's not to say that Mr. Hyde doesn't provide a happy ending.
In only his second posting at SOL, Mr. Hyde provides clean, readable prose with a well-diagrammed plot that moves at a nice pace. The two male officers of the law come across as a bit starchy, but somehow that seems appropriate. This story really belongs to the female characters and the villains. The author seems to leave an opening for a sequel, but "The Grantham Clinic" stands alone just fine as a complete story.