Literature / The Affinity Bridge

aka: Affinity Bridge

The Affinity Bridge is a 2008 novel, the first full-length entry in author George Mann's "Newbury & Hobbes" series, combining a Sherlock Holmes mystery bent with Steampunk and zombies.

The story is set in the strange and dangerous world of Victorian London, a city filled to the brim with the greatest technical marvels the Empire can muster: airships, ground trains, horseless carriages, and clockwork automatons. But beneath this shiny veneer of progress lurks a sinister side. This is a London where ghostly policemen haunt the fog-shrouded alleyways of Whitechapel, where cadavers can rise from the dead and where Sir Maurice Newbury, Gentleman Investigator for the Crown, works tirelessly to protect the Empire from her foes.

When a dirigible crashes under mysterious circumstances, Sir Maurice and his recently appointed assistant Miss Veronica Hobbes are called in to investigate. Meanwhile Scotland Yard deals with a spate of grisly murders and a terrifying plague that's ravaging the slums of the city. Danger awaits Newbury & Hobbes at every turn, and duplicitous figures are working to ensure that some mysterious remain unsolved.

The other entires in the series include:

• The Osiris Ritual (2009)
• The Immorality Engine (2011)
• The Executioner's Heart (2013)
• The Casebook of Newbury & Hobbes (2013, a short story collection)
• The Revenant Express (2019)
• The Albion Initiative (2022)

Some trope names below can spoil the book's plot twists. Proceed with caution.

---

This book provides examples of:

• A Foggy Day in London Town: Exaggerated — the London fog is thick and nigh omnipresent, from early morning and through much of the day. Travelers risk getting lost if they go walking without a lantern and a curb or a fence to follow, and there's always the risk of revenants lurking in the mists.
• AB Negative: The Fixer's butler is mentioned to be a universal donor:
  "Rothford is a willing donor, and his blood type is compatible with most people's."
  "Rothford?"
  "My manservant."
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Discussed but ultimately Averted — the automatons were technically cyborgs, making use of cheaply obtained human brains as a biological shortcut for the automatons' intelligence rather than having to reproduce the mechanical brains Villiers created. The only all-mechanical automaton Newbury and Hobbes see in a brief demonstration never malfunctions.
• Action Prologue: The prologue takes place in India, where a patrol of British soldiers are attacked by a revenant. Two of the three are killed gruesomely, and a third barely escapes with his life.
• Alternate History: Steam powered carriages and clockwork robots? Welcome to Victorian London!
• Artificial Zombie: The Chapman & Villiers automata are powered by the stolen brains of murder victims from the slums of London. The slums just so happen to be experiencing a revenant plague, which incubates in the blood of bite victims for a week before making the symptoms known. When infected paupers are murdered and their brains are used in the automata, the resulting automata malfunction in a way that mirrors the symptoms infected revenants display. From Chapter 23:
  "Think about it, Charles. There's a plague burning through the Whitechapel slums. Remember what I told you about the Indian doctor? The revenant virus incubates for up to eight days in the human brain. God knows how many of those harvested organs were already infected when they were wired up to the automata." He paused. "Judging by the manner in which Christopher Morgan's device went awry, I'd say we are dealing with something far more alarming than a simple malfunction. I think a number of those automata are carrying the revenant plague."
• Artistic License – Physics: The "automata" are powered by their own movement, in complete violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The inventor Villiers gives the following explanation:
  "The device is designed to power itself. When the automaton moves, a rotor inside its abdomen rocks back and forth, ratcheting the winding mechanism and causing the mainspring in the chest to become taut. Effectively, the unit is self-winding, and thus it will never power down, unless commanded to do so. If left inactive for long periods without instruction, the unit will eventually move itself to trigger the winding mechanism."
• Bookcase Passage: There's a secret door in Villiers' workshop that leads to his secret laboratory/ surgical suite.
• Brain in a Jar: How the automatons work. Newbury, Veronica, and Bainbridge also see an actual brain in a jar of bubbling fluid in Villiers' lab, before the brain is to be placed inside a robot.
  Instead of the clockwork mechanisms that he had been expecting to find inside of the automaton's skull, there was a pinkish-grey, fleshy human brain. Newbury fought back the rising bile in his throat. Then, needing to confirm his suspicion, he retrieved the flail from where he'd discarded it on the floor it a few feet away [sic], and set about splitting open the head of the other unit. A couple of sharp blows later and the skull had given way, revealing the same disturbing sight as the first time: the spattered grey matter of a human organ. He leaned one arm against the wall, trying to process the information. Human organs inside of clockwork men.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Newbury wards off some assailants using an axe and a flail that had been displayed on the wall of his office at the British Museum.
• Cardboard Box of Unemployment: A downplayed, Inverted example shows up in Chapter 2 — as Veronica starts her first official day at work with Newbury in his crowded, untidy office, she's mentioned to have brought a box of personal items with her:
  Veronica was hard at work, clearing the spare desk across the other side of the room, unpacking her small box of belongings and filing the many sheaves of abandoned notes she continued to find in drawers and random piles all around the office.
• Coming in Hot: The heroes crash an airship into the Thames after knocking out the pilot — neither Newbury nor Hobbes can fly an airship, so it's fortunate they managed to land the craft at all.
• Cyborg Helmsman: The automaton pilots that Chapman and Villiers have been churning out to fly their airships aren't strictly automatons. The robots are running around with repurposed human brains in their skulls that form the basis of their " "machine" " intelligence.
• Disposable Pilot: When Newbury and Hobbes track Chapman to his getaway airship, Hobbes knocks Chapman unconscious to keep him from killing an already injured Newbury in a knock-down, drag-out brawl. Unfortunately, neither of them know how to fly the craft, so they end up crash landing the ship in the Thames.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Veronica's sister, Amelia, whose epileptic fits/ vision of the future have landed her in a psychiatric hospital. Doubly so when she has a vision and her eyes roll back in her head, only showing the whites.
  Her hair was raven black and long, loose around her shoulder, and her pale skin and soft complexion gave the impression that she was even younger than her fragile nineteen years.
• Evil Gloating: When Newburry and Chapman brawl on Chapman's get-away airship and Newburry is knocked down, Chapman takes the opportunity to gloat while kicking the prone investigator.
• Eye Scream:
  • The revenant that attacks Jack Coulthard's patrol in the prologue gouges out the nearly-catatonic Taylor's eyes.
  • When Newbury is attacked by a handful of revenants while investigating a crime scene, he smashes his lantern against one of the revenants to distract it. The oil from the lamp splashes against the revenant's face and shoulders, and it quickly catches on fire. The narration describes how the revenant is blinded because "its eyes boiled away in the heat."
• Flesh-Eating Zombie: The revenants are driven by an urge to consume human flesh:
  Three monsters—it was the only way he could think to describe them—were in the process of gutting the two constables, whose corpses had been dashed to the ground, blood spattered across their torn faces, spilled out over the cobbles all around them. Steam rose from their warm innards as the revenants pulled loops of intestines free from large rents in their bellies, feasting on it all indiscriminately, stuffing it into their mouths with abandon. The creatures looked as if they may once have been human, but all sense of their humanity had now been lost. Their flesh was peeling in long ribbons, their hair falling out around their shoulders, their clothes hanging filthy and torn from their abused bodies. The virus had done its work well, and these monsters were now no more than dead carriers of the plague, capable of nothing but killing and feeding on their victims.
• Friend on the Force: Charles Bainbridge, of Scotland Yard. He's a close personal friend of Newbury and the two have collaborated on multiple cases.
• Functional Addict: Newbury is an opium addict, and often spends his nights drinking himself into a stupor with laudanum-spiked wine. Normally he's able to go about his business without the addiction affecting his life, but while working through the case of The Lady Armitage he overdoes it on the laudanum and needs to be rescued by Veronica. He remains an addict through the end of the novel.
• I Can Still Fight!: Maurice pulls off this trope with a combination of his stubborn, restless attitude, and a continuous stream of things trying to kill or escape from him and his friends.
• The Immune: Newbury is immune to the revenant plague after being bitten by one in his youth. It's later discovered that Jack Coulthard is also immune after surviving a revenant attack in India, and doctors hope to make a vaccine for the plague from his blood.

• Killer Robot: Two of the Chapman & Villiers automatons attack Newbury in his offices. They've been modified to include hidden blades in their hands.
  The automaton cocked its head slightly, as if trying to compute his words. Then, stopping about six feet away from him, it raised its right hand before its face. There was a soft, almost pneumatic snicking sound as thin, knifelike blades slipped out from the ends of its fingers, turning its hand into a vicious razor-sharp claw.
• Layman's Terms: During the course of the investigation, Newbury has to explain some of his vocabulary to Bainbridge:
  "Here, give me the light and take a look at the man's throat. I think you'll see something of great interest around the larynx."
  Bainbridge placed his cane on the ground beside the corpse and leaned in. "The what?"
  "The Adam's apple."
• Mad Oracle: Veronica's sister Amelia is subject to epileptic fits during which she can glimpse the future. Their parents have had Amelia committed to a sanitarium.
  ...Veronica knew that her sister was far from the lunatic that the doctor had led her parents to believe. She wasn't mad. She just happened to be able to see the future.
• Mad Scientist: Pierre Villiers, inventor of the automatons. At first he seems like an eccentric inventor who pays more attention to his work than the world around him, but it's revealed that he experimented on orphans and paupers while in Paris and has continued his work in England, using the brains of murder victims to run his clockwork automatons. Newbury compares his morals to those of a madman while praising his intellect.
  " Villiers was an evil man, but he was also incredibly accomplished. In fact, I'd go as far as saying he was a genius, in his own way. And with genius comes a certain amorality that is sometimes difficult to judge. Genius is, in many ways, akin to madness. Both states of mind demand a disconnection from reality, from the real, physical world, an ability to lose oneself in thought." He shrugged. "There is no contesting the fact that Villiers's crimes were of the most appalling variety, but I only wonder what may have come of it if his genius could have been harnessed for the good of the empire, instead of being misapplied in such a terrible way..."
• Man on Fire: Newbury sets a revenant on fire with his oil lantern to distract it.
• Neck Snap: The preferred method of the "Glowing Policeman." His victims are found either throttled to death or with their necks violently broken.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: Well, the back of the book does use it, but said zombie-like entities are referred to as "revenants" within the story. Also applicable to the robots, which are always referred to as "automata". Both instances can be justified by the setting, and the terminology which would be appropriate in it.
  They were right to fear, though: before the virus killed its host, it would completely unravel their humanity, transforming them into a monstrous killing machine. Their flesh would stop regenerating, their only thoughts becoming animalistic, feral; in short, they would be reduced to nothing but the basest of creature, and with the loss of faculty, they'd become almost unstoppable, feeling no pain, showing no awareness of wounds that would kill an average man. It was as if the virus, somehow, kept them alive through all of this, waiting for an unidentified biological trigger. Then, after a handful of days had passed, the virus would complete its work and turn their brains to sponge, dropping their spent, lifeless bodies by the side of the road.
• The Ophelia: Veronica's sister, Amelia, suffers from epileptic fits during which she sees visions of the future. Unfortunately, everyone besides Veronica believes Amelia is sickly and insane, so Amelia been sequestered away in a sanitarium by their parents.
• Police Are Useless: Averted, they totally aren't useless.
• Robot Maid: Although the automata are first deployed as airship captains, Chapman and Villiers are all too happy to extol their potential uses in other industries. It also appears that a handful of automata were sold or rented out as domestic units:
  • Christopher Morgan purchased a unit to serve drinks at receptions held in his gallery. When the unit malfunctioned, he returned it to Chapman & Villiers for a full refund. Nevertheless, Morgan was so upset with the unit's malfunction that he volunteered to share information on Chapman & Villiers' operations with Newbury, and got himself killed for the effort.
  • A fleet of automatons serve as waiters, musicians, and bouncers at the high-society party hosted by the Hanbury-Whites.
• Sherlock Scan: Downplayed, but does appear at one point. Bainbridge shows up at Newbury's house early in the morning, and Newbury deduces that there's been another murder.
  Newbury looked the other man up and down. "There's been another murder in Whitechapel."
  Bainbridge looked astounded by this rather minor piece of deduction. "How did you—?"
  Newbury sighed. "Why else would you be here at this hour, Charles?" He shrugged. "Your boots are still clean, and you look like you've dressed hastily; your tie is askew and you've notched your belt on the wrong hole." Bainbridge looked down at his belt, and then shook his head in exasperation. "I take it you've only recently been made aware of the situation and have come to pick me up on your way over to the scene?"
• Smoky Gentlemen's Club: The Orleans Club, where Christopher Morgan invites Newbury to meet and discuss information about the crashed The Lady Armitage airship. Veronica isn't even allowed inside the lounge, and is instead sent to wait in the Ladies' Room with the wives of other club members.
• Sword Cane: Actually, an electric cattle-prod-type-thing cane.
• Steampunk: Sparse at first, but as the story progresses so does the density of awesome, era-inappropriate stuff made out of brass.
• The Summation: Chatper 30 is dedicated to Bainbridge and Newburry wrapping up the facts of their disparate cases — including the identity of the mysterious royal whose body was found on the crashed airship and the particulars of the case of the Glowing Policeman.
• Title Drop: In Chapter 26, when Villiers describes the workings of his Brain in a Jar cyborg automatons, the brain-to-automaton connection is called the 'affinity bridge.'
  "The human organ is placed in this cavity, here, lowered gently onto the brass spike to hold it firmly in place. The wires are then threaded precisely through the cortex until they engage with the sensitive response centres in the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Electrical stimuli, generated by the movement of the automaton devices itself, are then fed back and forth along these wires to create a simple neural interface that enables the organ to receive input from the world outside of the machine's casing." He clacked his tongue against his teeth. "I call this my 'affinity bridge,' the device by which my creations may learn to interact with the external world."
• Traintop Battle: When Newbury chases down the Glowing Policeman who had threatened Veronica, the criminal attempts to escape by hitching a ride on a ground train. Newbury follows him, and the confrontation ends up coming to blows on the roof.
• Viral Transformation: The zombie plague is contracted by scratches or bites. It makes the skin stop regenerating and causes violent, animalistic behavior. Also comes with immunity to pain!
• Vomiting Cop: Veronica "retched violently" while investigating the passenger cabin of the burnt-out airship crash.
• Wetware CPU: Although Villiers really did build automatons that functioned solely based on mechanical intelligence, he discovered that it was way faster and cheaper to use the illicitly obtained brains of murder victims from the slums as the basis for his automatons' intelligence than to reproduce the mechanical design. He ends up unleashing a hoard of Artificial Zombies when he uses brains infected with incubating cases of the revenant plague in his automatons.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • One of the two automatons that are sent to assassinate Newbury in his office is already bloodied when they arrive. Newbury surmises that they've already committed some violent act to gain entry. The implication would be that they'd attacked the museum's doorman Watkins, but no other victims are mentioned when the defeated robots are collected from the museum campus.
  • The crashed The Lady Armitage airship is later revealed to have been a plague ship with a passenger hold of revenants that had been rounded up by Chapman & Villiers' automatons, ultimately destined for Ireland. Why the revenants were being rounded up and shipped off to Ireland by Chapman & Villiers is never touched on again. Chapter 7 shows that the government's official policy is to take the corpses of the infected and dump them out at sea, so readers are left guessing whether Chapman & Villiers were trying to establish a newly infected population in Ireland for business purposes or simply because they hated the Irish.
• Wolverine Claws: The Killer Robots who attack Newbury in his offices have retractable knife blades hidden in their fingers.
• Working the Same Case: Newbury is assisting Bainbridge and Scotland Yard in their investigation of the "Glowing Policeman" murders when he's directed by the Crown to switch his focus to the crash of the new Chapman & Villiers airship The Lady Armitage. All the while, there's a revenant plague spreading through the slums of London. All these factors turn out to be connected to the Chapman & Villiers manufacturing plant. The "Glowing Policeman" was a hired killer who provided a consistent stream of dead bodies for Chapman & Villiers, who secretly purchased the brains of the dead men from the morgue. The brains were used to create cyborg pilots/ automatons for their airships. The pilot of The Lady Armitage was given a brain infected with the revenant plague, causing it to malfunction and crash the ship. The Lady Armitage was also being used as a plague ship, with a passenger hold full of revenants that had been rounded up by the Chapman & Villiers automatons to be dumped in Ireland for... no discernible reason. And the reason Newburry was tasked with investigating the crash of The Lady Armitage was the discovery of the corpse of a minor royal in the wreckage — a royal who had contracted the revenant plague while visiting prostitutes in the slums, ending up a mindless zombie in the hold of the ship.
• Zeppelins from Another World: Part and parcel of the book's steampunk trappings:
  • Airships have made the empire much tighter, as one can travel from Britain to its colonies around the world in record time - passage from India to Britain only takes a week! On clear days airships dot the skies over London, and on cloudy days they stick close to their mooring lines.
  • The plot is kicked into gear by the crash of the airship The Lady Armitage, and during the course of the investigation Newbury and Hobbes visit the airship manufacturing plant of Chapman & Villiers. Villiers has also invented a mechanical pilot for their airships, and Chapman is poised to revolutionize the airship industry with their pilot & airship combo deal.
  • Near the end of the book, Chapman attempts to escape from Newbury, Hobbes, and Bainbridge by flying away on a recently completed airship that had been moored on the roof of his factory. After Newbury fights Chapman and Veronica knocks him unconscious, they end up crashing the airship into the river because neither of them can fly it.

---