Ambrose Parry is the joint pen name of Scottish crime novelist Chris Brookmyre and his wife, Dr Marisa Haetzman, a consultant anaesthetist with a strong interest in the history of medicine. Their collaboration grew from Haetzman’s postgraduate research into nineteenth-century medical practice, particularly the work of Edinburgh obstetrician James Young Simpson and the introduction of chloroform. The name “Ambrose Parry” itself echoes Ambroise Paré, the sixteenth-century French surgeon. Together they combine Brookmyre’s experience in crime fiction with Haetzman’s medical expertise to recreate Victorian Edinburgh as a city of rapid scientific progress, entrenched social inequality and considerable physical danger.
Their principal work is the Raven, Fisher and Simpson historical mystery series, beginning with The Way of All Flesh in 2018. The novels follow medical student Will Raven and Sarah Fisher, an intelligent young woman constrained by the limited professional opportunities available to women, within the household and medical circle of the real James Young Simpson. The sequence continues with The Art of Dying, A Corruption of Blood, Voices of the Dead and The Death of Shame, combining murder investigations with developments in anaesthesia, obstetrics, forensic medicine and Victorian spiritualism. Real historical figures and medical controversies are woven into the mysteries, while the contrast between Raven’s professional access and Sarah’s struggle for recognition allows the books to examine class and gender alongside the darker history of nineteenth-century medicine.
