Daniel Carter was a London police officer who found out the hard way that monsters are real. They've just moved underground, forming criminal cartels. He's now a broken man, given an elixir, the same elixir developed by Dr. Jekyll, and one last opportunity to smash the monster clans plaguing London.

This would have worked better spread across multiple books. There's some cool world-building here. It's a shame to see it all boiled down to boss fights. Most of the book is the same. Go take out this monster clan, rinse and repeat. There's wasted potential where this could have been fleshed out into a better story. The way it is now, you quickly see the entire book mapped out ahead of you as soon as Mr. Hyde appears.2021 edelweiss netedel-202120 s John400 43

Green's writing made this book highly readable, but the story was far too simple for me to say it was more than just okay--and that's two stars in Goodreads' rating code, so maybe a little better than neutral but not enough to round up to three.

The publisher's blurb, reprinted at the top of this Goodreads page, is nicely accurate for the main character Daniel and for the world-building premise. The monsters of fiction are real and have adapted to modern times by forming "guild Clans" that secretly run the world's organized crime. In particular, Stevenson's Jekyll & Hyde was a factual account, not fiction, and Mr. Hyde recruits Daniel to destroy the monster Clans, one after the other.

For this mission Daniel drinks Dr. Jekyll's elixir, becomes a Hyde, and is joined up with another Hyde recruit, Tina, who's actually stronger and more aggressive than Daniel is, and, note this, she's six inches taller than Daniel. What a wildly misleading cover picture! Did they figure nobody would buy the book if the gal on the cover towered over the guy? Even her more feminine pose is misleading--Daniel's the one in that duo who's forever hesitating and wondering before he acts.

But he does act, violently, right alongside his partner Tina, and, well, that's the story. The elixir gives people great superpowers, you see, so they can withstand repeated attacks from dozens of monsters at a time, to say nothing of the monsters' human servants. And each of the monster Clans is conveniently holding its secret annual gathering in London within an interval of a week or two. The result is just superpower fight scenes one after the other. No spoilers here, but the outcome was obvious.

Highly readable, if you're not expecting much.borrowed9 s Craig5,429 128

I've read and enjoyed a lot of Green's books, but I was really disappointed by this one. It has a decent set-up, with a world in which vampires, mummies, werewolves, and Frankenstein monsters exist in tightly knit organizations, and they're opposed by a former policeman who's recruited to join the Hydes to oppose them. Unfortunately, the conflicts are all resolved with ridiculous ease and the final confrontation is not resolved at all; the book just stops. There's no clever banter or close relationship building you find in the Ghost Finders books, no sharp satire or overt humor the Nightside books, no clever plotting or subtly ironic humor as in the Hawk & Fisher books... after the unpleasant cover there's a predictable and silly series of violent events. There are some dreary and disgusting scenes (such as animals being slaughtered) that were disturbing, an unly sexual relationship, and altogether I didn't think the few engaging bits were enough to outweigh the negatives. 9 s April7

As a potential new series from Green, Jekyll & Hyde Inc. is an interesting world, unconnected with the Nightside or Drood universe (so far at least). Great action and fight scenes, the actual plot is a bit rushed. Characters are quintessential Green, man and woman joined together in the good fight, regardless of their lack of history and interaction together.

Not my favorite from Green, but I would buy and read a cereal box if he wrote the copy for it. If J&H continues as a series, then I will continue to read it. As a stand-alone, I hope the the final version (I read an ARC) has a bit more added to help transition the action scenes and world build. 6 s Faye444 48

Read: Dec 2021

Simon R. Green is has been on my auto-buy authors list for at least twelve years now, and with the exception of the Drood series which I could never get into, I love his style of writing and his imagination. With Jekyll & Hyde Inc. Green sets up a new world, though it is unclear whether this is the start of a series or a stand-alone novel at this point.

The plot:
A scarred and damaged former police officer who still maintains his personal sense of justice is given the chance to take an elixir to become a 'Hyde' - a virtually invincible superhuman, based on the Hyde character from the classic Robert Louis Stephenson novella - and help to rid the city of London from various dark, supernatural forces.

What I d:
- Daniel; he is similar to all of Green's heroes in that he is a dark, sardonic character with a strong moral compass who takes questionable risks and has a healthy respect for his female counterparts.
- Tina; the female Hyde. I d the hints of her back-story, although the details were not fully developed. She is stronger and more savvy than Daniel, but also more impulsive and insensitive to others around her.
- The adaptation of the original novella to link it to this present day version.
- The undercurrent of menace coming from Edward in every interaction - sometimes not so much of an undercurrent. The incident of him beating a tiger to death with his bare hands was hard to read.

What I disd:
- the details of this world are frustratingly scant. I wanted more of a set-up and an understanding of all the different clans and the way they interact with each other, and how much the general public are aware of the supernatural beings around them.
- unless I missed it, the only visual we get of Daniel is the illustration on the front cover. There's no description of what he looks pre-Hyde or post-Hyde, or what his injuries were after chapter 1.
- the romance between Daniel and Tina seemed unnecessary
- the clans and Edward were all beaten too easily and Daniel and Tina were too invincible to make you feel there was ever any true danger for the main characters.

Overall, while Jekyll & Hyde Inc was a good, entertaining read, it felt an ultimately lazily written story. There was so much more that could have been explored, detailed and examined, from fleshing out Daniel's appearance and character, Edward's history, Tina's backstory and the world building, which were all left unwritten.

Hopefully, there will be a book 2 to fill in some of those frustrating gaps.i-own-a-physical-copy reviewed simon-r-green-author ...more6 s Mike793 33

This was fine, but not the type of exceptional that I expect from Simon Green.
It's about a cop who is introduced very violently to the fact that monsters are real by barely surviving a police raid on some Frankensteins.
And then he meets Mr Hyde and is given a chance to fight all the monsters and take down the Monster Crime Families.
The concept is pretty strong, but there isn't anything else there really. It's have d it if there were more twists, as it is, it's pretty predictable and the couple of "twists" made me go "Was that not known before now?"
I still really Green, but this wasn't that great.action-adventure audio-books comedic-horror ...more3 s Andrew2,319

I have to admit that I do love some of the utterly over the top action and storylines Simon Green has come up - the idea of the Nightside and all its inhabitants is so much fun (I would love to explore that world some more) but this book I have to say feels a project that didn't really deliver.

Now I always try and avoid spoilers so bare with me but I would say that the concept of this books - become a monster to fight monsters (and yes that is splashed all over the book cover) is not an old one always open to some great action and fun - however this book felt both rushed and limited on material to the point it felt it had finished even before I read to the end of the book.

How I could be wrong this could be the opener of a new series but I do struggle to see where or how it could anywhere else where as I say the Nightside series is just bursting with possibilities. So yes it was fun while it lasted and the dialogue as always raised a smile or two but I have read and enjoyed better from Mr Green - sorry2 s Marlene3,089 221

Originally published at Reading Reality

I picked this book up because I usually enjoy the authorÂ’s fine line in snark. His characters generally manage to say the things we all wish weÂ’d said, and thatÂ’s always good for a bit of a chuckle, even if the humor involved tends to have the whiff of the gallows about it.

In other words, I expected to enjoy this book, at least on some levels. Even when his stories are at their most macabre, thereÂ’s always been something in the banter and the byplay that has tickled me a bit. Even when, or especially because thereÂ’s frequently something awful going on at the time.

I expected to have a good reading time with Jekyll & Hyde Inc. I really did. I d the concept of it taking a monster to catch a monster, and the idea of Edward Hyde still running around London almost a century and a half after he supposedly died – along with his alter ego and progenitor, Dr. Henry Jekyll.

The blurb makes it seem as if the Hydes are, if not exactly on the side of the angels, at least on the side of putting the monsters down and out of both our and their misery – because the monsters have certainly earned it.

I was looking for a fun, horror-adjacent story with a heaping helping of snark. I expected to end with a bit of a chuckle and the feeling of order restored to the world in one way or another. Something along those lines.

But at the end of Jekyll & Hyde Inc., all I felt was sad. And IÂ’m really, really sad about that.

Escape Rating C: From the description, and from the opening of the story, IÂ’ll admit that I was wondering if this was going to turn out to be a bit the Secret Histories series, only with real monsters as the protagonists instead of merely human monsters with great technology.

But the Hydes as a group donÂ’t seem to have any redeeming motives the way that the Droods did. The Droods believed that they knew what was best for humanity, and even if they were wrong about methods or results, even if they caused a lot of collateral damage, and even if some of their number were corrupt, their overall goals at least nodded at being righteous.

The Hydes, or at least Edward Hyde himself, just want to eliminate all the other monster clans so that he can be the top dog and rule the underworld. Daniel and Tina are just tools in his hands who donÂ’t realize that they are being taken for a ride until very near the end.

The underworld the Hydes are taking out has all the creepiness of the Nightside, or even Neil GaimanÂ’s Neverwhere, without any light shining in from John Taylor or Richard Mayhew or even the Marquis de Carabas. In other words, I was looking for a least a bit of a redemptive arc or the possibility thereof, and all I got was a breather between monster mashes.

The relationship that develops between Daniel and Tina may be intended to mimic some kind of romance, but just doesnÂ’t have the kind of heart that the relationship between Ishmael Jones and Penny Belcourt has in that series. Or even the on again/off again relationship that Gideon Sable has with Annie Anybody in The Best Thing You Can Steal.

Something is just missing in Jekyll & Hyde Inc. It has all the grim and all the dark of many of the author’s previous series, but it’s lacking in the light moments – and the snark – that made Ishmael Jones and Gideon Sable and the Nightside so compulsively readable.

Qualities that I sincerely hope he brings back in his next book, whatever it might be. IÂ’ll certainly be looking for it the next time I go back to see what Ishmael Jones is up to in Till Sudden Death Do Us Part and the rest of that series.1 Darius Ostrowski927 12

Fans of Simon R. Green will find this quick novel a bit disappointing. As usual, Mr. Green has a fascinating premise: monsters still exist in our world, they have just gone underground and now control various criminal enterprises. Daniel Carter, London cop, finds this out the hard way - he and his fellow detectives go to bust an undercover "Frankenstein" surgery, only to be (almost) wiped out. Left a broken man, he gets an opportunity for revenge through the wonderful elixir of Edward Hyde.

Sounds pretty good so far, right? But the rest of the book is a rushed affair from here. Daniel becomes a Hyde, meets a fellow Hyde in Tina, with whom he falls in love with in a day or two, and then proceeds to take on a monster clan, who all happen to be having gatherings in London during the same week or two.

We get a little bit of banter, a little bit of Edward Hyde, a rushed fight with a new monster clan, and repeat. Not very engaging, the relationships are all very rushed, and the fights seem repetitive. Not the best effort from Mr. Green.2 s Jon32 5

Disappointing

IÂ’m a longtime fan or Simon GreenÂ’s work, but this novel really was lacking so very much. Just a flimsy plot, two-dimensional world and characters, and just unsatisfying overall.

I expected better, and give this what is really 2.5 stars. At least Mr. Green published a professionally edited book, and there were no spelling, or other obvious grammatical errors as we often see in newly published digital works, even from major publishing houses.

Still, this felt something written for a middle school level mentality (aside from some of the content), with the kind of simplicity you find in (some) works for children.

IÂ’d love to know how other readers feel about this book.
2 s adam Lincoln19

I d the idea behind the story

This book has no pacing. It one event to the next one big coke fueled bender. The writing is also a teenage power fantasy. I really wanted to this book but I think IÂ’m just to old for this. Definitely meant for younger crowds, I probably would have loved it at 13.2 s Terry369 1 follower

If you have read any other Mr. Green book you have honestly already read most of this. Dialogue feels exactly the same as all his other Hero & Heroine couples. The side cast never get interesting and feel only added to have something other than the Duo to break up their Dialogue. With the big twist ending not having a twist at all.
Hopefully this was a one off adventure and not more recycling.1 Felix880 24

Awesome and way too short! D.K.Author 21 books140

I enjoyed it, though I wished the author had broken this into three novels and spent more time dealing with the individual monster clans. Fun read, a summer movie where you need to suspend your belief and just enjoy the ride.1 3 comments Mary644 13

He has a lot of really good book - he's one of my favorite authors; but this on just wasn't for me at all. I have plenty of others he's written that I can keep rereading!audio british mystery ...more1 James147

What if monsters were real. Vampires, Werewolves, Mummys, all real but driven underground by the bright lights of modern society. The monsters as evil as ever, have taken over organized crime. How do you stop them? Apparently it takes a monster to kill a monster.
Enter Edward Hyde, the incarnation of evil, who recruits a team at Jekyll and Hyde, Inc to put an end to the monsters.
I was given an ARC of this book to review. The story moves along quickly from one battle to the next. Plenty of action. Quick read. This is an early copy, it could use some editing - lots of repetition. John Marshall92 2

So, picture this. Vampires, werewolves, mummies, and “Frankensteins” are real. They’re all pretty corny, there’s only one tiny group of each, and they live in London. Edward Hyde, the Robert Louis Stevenson creation who is also apparently real, wants to sort them out.

This Met cop named Daniel got roped into a sting against what he thought was some black market organs operation. But it turns out to be a Frankenstein den (as in, other mad scientists making people out of body parts) and Daniel and the rest of his squad get wrecked. Daniel survives, but is left crippled, and dismissed from the force.

Hyde brings him in, and knowing how consumed he is by the idea of revenge, gives him the “Elixir” that made him who he is. This heals his injuries, makes him huge and strong, and filled with righteous fury against his enemies. Pairing him up with another “Hyde,” a massive woman named Tina, they are then dispatched to sort out the other monsters.

This initially appealed because the Jekyll/Hyde dynamic has several interpretations over the years, and I wondered how theyÂ’d approach it here. Hyde as the repressed, base urges made physical? A better version of yourself? A burly, superpowered split personality?

Here, itÂ’s an uneven mix of all of these. ItÂ’s mostly the huge super-strong monster, often portraying feats of mind-boggling strength and durability. Some attention is paid to the originalÂ’s interpretation where Hyde is patently immoral and driven by id, particularly early on, when Daniel is new to all this and learning what he can do with Tina. Some incidental attention is paid to the temptation of giving in to your evil half, but itÂ’s not really acted upon.

Which leads nicely into one of my biggest peeves with this book: itÂ’s basically just the characters moving to the next bunch of monsters they need to kill, with isolated adventures between them. Some of them seem theyÂ’ll add some intrigue to the narrative, and they just donÂ’t. Daniel and Tina simply go to the next place, wisecrack a bit, a scene of gross yet tepid bloodshed occurs, and then it ends. The leads dust themselves off and go to the next one.

It doesnÂ’t help that the monsters are written with the barest amount of imagination. Picture every mainstream, popcultural version of movie monsters, and thatÂ’s basically what there is. There is no real sense that these monsters fester in the shadows, brushing so close that we can feel their fur and scales, as perhaps would be the case with Neil Gaiman or Stephen King. TheyÂ’re just waiting around to get beat up. It also undermines the bookÂ’s stakes when the two mains are impervious to damage, and most of the suspense is when they have to do something slightly more complex than punch them to death.

The few intrigues set up in the book, Daniel wondering if his morality will atrophy now that heÂ’s impossibly strong and impervious to consequence, are forgotten about or ignored. Tina suggests buried depths, but the story firmly avoids any chances to develop them. A few of the supporting characters might have added some welcome texture to this otherwise rote story, where most of my time was spent thinking about what could or should happen, rather than the infuriatingly predictable thing that does. It further limits the bookÂ’s interest where all the characters speak with the same snarky voice, and the easiest way to tell them apart is by finding other names they use in their dialogue.

For all of that, though, I at least wasnÂ’t bored. The story is pulpy and sprightly, and even though Daniel and Tina are pretty thin as characters, seeing them revel in their violence and appetites is entertaining. ItÂ’s tempting to imagine what they might have done in a premise that actually explored the Jekyll/Hyde concept from its emotional or psychological aspects, but that may be a bit much from a premise this. Annie Yotova307 4

Once upon a time, people believed in monsters. Then the industrial progress and the lights everywhere, reduced these beliefs to superstitions, leaving no place for these creatures of the dark. Or so the story goes anyway. But as Daniel Carter is about to learn, this is just what they want humanity to think - they are still around, in the shadows, controlling the crime networks of the world. And there is only one organization which seems to be on humanities side: Jekyll & Hyde Inc. (led by no other but Mr. Hyde himself of course).

Meet Daniel Carter, a London policeman who is tasked with breaking a crime den... and ends up almost dead after monsters try to kill him. Noone believes what he saw (how could they?) and he had almost resigned in living his life as a disgraced policeman with a broken body. Until one of the men he believes to be dead show up - and an interesting proposal - and off he goes to meet Mr. Hyde, hoping for something but still refusing to believe. And before long, his body is cured (courtesy of Dr. Jekyll's serum), he has a partner (in more than one way) and he is on the path to destroying all the remaining clans of monsters.

That is an awesome premise for a series. Or a novel. What follows feels a misuse of the premise. Simon R. Green can write snarky characters and these are not an exception but usually this snarkiness is attached to something else... here is feels snarky is the only thing that holds the characters together.

Had you ever played one of those first-person shooter games ("Doom II: Hell on Earth" for example) where the only strategy is to kill all the monsters so they do not get you while jumping into the next level... where you do the same over and over? Or watched those C-list (or Z-list even) actions which Hollywood produced by the hundreds (or so it seemed) in the 80s and 90s and which were essentially "a guy against the world" (some of them worked better than others; most of them were shadows of the successful ones)? I grew up with these movies and Doom II was the first computer game I ever played -- and the novel, once Daniel was cured, reminded me of both of these -- a never ending cycle of go to a clan, fight a clan, destroy a clan, mop up the survivors, go to your apartment with the hot woman and break the bed with her. Rinse and repeat for most of the book. There is also Mr. Hyde who shows himself as being more and more sinister, even if our heroes don't seem to notice for a long time. And if you think that you know the story of THAT character, you may get surprised (that's one of the parts that actually was very well done).

The end of the novel came as expected - in a tale which has the name Hyde in it, expecting black and white would have been silly. The last chapters, once all the killings of clans was done, work in some ways and ties together all the lose threads from the beginning. That middle portion seems almost a fill-up - the beginning and the end is where the story really happens and where the surprises keep popping up. So I am glad I did not give up mid-novel...

The novel is not bad for what it is and if you enjoy battles in a urban fantasy setting, you probably won't be disappointed. And I cannot blame the author for not writing the book I wanted him to write or expected to read when I picked that one up. But I keep thinking how this premise could have been used for a whole series (although killing a clan per installment would have been too formulaic). I hope that Green will return to the earlier days of that story - before Daniel came onto the stage - leaving this as the coda of a much longer story. Although I suspect that it won't happen.2022 novels David Palazzolo253 2

“It takes a monster to kill a monster”, indeed. For the most part this is a love letter to the Universal and Hammer Film monster movies of old, and it was a fun, if imperfect read. I get the feeling that Simon R Green’s latest novel was meant to be the start of a new series, but somewhere along the line that idea got scrapped. The idea is that the standard Green romantic couple/badass partners are recruited by none other than *the* Edward Hyde to destroy clans of classic monsters. The twist is that these clans—the Vampires, the Werewolves, the Frankensteins and the Mummies have over the past few decades gone to ground to take over organized crime in London, becoming the lords of its Underworld (cue lightning strike)!

Throughout the novel, our heroes take on each clan, fighting the good fight but the whole thing becomes a little repititious, particularly in the space of one book. One canÂ’t help but wonder how each monster clan would have developed had they been the focus of their own novel

Another element that became somewhat repetitious was the dynamic between the leads, Daniel and Tina. Despite their being partners and each saving each other from various threats, the clear protagonist in the book is the male lead, Daniel and for once I wish Green would have broken with that tradition. A female main protagonist would have been a breath of fresh air, also, it was a little uneasy to watch Tina go from teacher to subordinate in a short amount of time.

But for all itÂ’s faults I enjoyed reading it and probably would read again some years from now if I ever got the chance. I also am keeping hope alive for a sequel Tad393 51

Daniel Carter is a London cop with a conscience who is sent with his partners to raid an illegal organ harvesting operation in Jekyll & Hyde Inc, by Simon R. Green. Carter and the other young cops sent on the raid hope it will be a feather in their caps and an opportunity to move forward careers they fear are stuck in neutral. What they find instead is that monsters are real. Most of them wind up dead, nearly torn to pieces, and Daniel is left a cripple. No one believes his story leaving both his life and his career in tatters. Sometime later, one of his friends shows up and gives him a card with an address on it. Turning up at the address, Carter finds himself in the office of Edward Hyde. The Edward Hyde. In exchange for CarterÂ’s help, he offers him Dr. JekyllÂ’s elixir which will restore CarterÂ’s body and then some. All he has to do is help destroy the monster clans which run LondonÂ’s criminal underworld. Now a monster himself, Carter is set loose on the clans, Frankenstein, Vampire, Mummy, and Werewolf. With a little luck, he might even survive.

This book has an irresistible premise and a lot of great action pieces. Each of the monster types presents a different and more difficult obstacle to overcome which leads to some great fight scenes and clever attack strategies. The characters are a little one-dimensional and the plot jumps from battle to battle with little transition. The reason the clans are all gathered is also convenient and unconvincing.

If you love the premise and enjoy some fun fight scenes then this is something worth picking up. Just be prepared to overlook some gaps in the plot and weak character development.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher.arc fantasy sci-fi ...more Thomas Tymstone294 3

??SPOILER ALERT ??

My first thought: almost adequateNext

Next: It could have been so much more.
The prerequisite Simon R Green phrases were there ie; "red with tooth and claw" and "I never knew you when you weren't" ect ect.
But the characters were oddly slow and wishy washy and moral at odd times. I wanted to Daniel, but he couldn't make up his mind except when when he was saving his friends by killing them. None of them even got the chance to learn to be better.
?So when you kill all the monsters in the world by being a stronger, smarter, more devious monster, do you kill yourself in the end?
What happens to the families and friends of all the other people and things they killed? Nothing is scary forever.
I know this was several books into one so somethings were shortened but they were shortened.
Ps If you write strong women but have the men always need to save them and then apologize after every time are you really writing strong women or just a place where the men only act they support them, but in the end do believe in their skills ie; Eddy and Mollie
?How come Tina was a Hyde for a while longer than Daniel, but he was just as strong and as fast as her?

Dashed off fash with less thought than usual.
OK but not great. I don't believe they would live very long in say The Nightside.

Only my opinions
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