Paul T. Scheuring is perhaps best known as the creator of the hit show Prison Break. He’s been a writer, producer, and director for 25 years. Despite his success in Hollywood, Scheuring has always wanted to write novels. His first was The Far Shore (2017); The Resurrectionist is his second.

Set in London in 1820, the narrative follows body snatcher Job Mowatt, anatomist Percival Quinn, and Beauchamp and Gray, a pair of opium eaters who have found that murder is easier than digging up graves when you need a corpse. Kirkus Reviews praises The Resurrectionist as a “thrilling historical drama, thoughtful and emotionally poignant.”

Speaking from his home in Northern California, Scheuring describes how he got interested in grave robbing. “It was one of those odd things where a little bit of information sparks your curiosity. I don’t even remember what I was reading, but I was intrigued by the discovery that there was an actual black market for corpses and that patrician anatomists interacted with lowly grave robbers. I thought that this relationship was interesting in a society where class distinctions were such a big deal. 

“I also wondered, Who would choose to dig up bodies? Grave robbing was a thriving trade, but it also seemed like the oddest possible vocational choice. This is where some character development started happening.”

Percival Quinn wants to uncover the secrets of the human body, and he’s willing to consort with thieves to keep his lab stocked with bodies. But his needs become personal when both his wife and the baby she’s carrying are in danger. He requires a pregnant corpse—a fresh one—if he’s going to learn how to deliver his child without killing the woman he loves.

Job Mowatt is a man whose reduced circumstances doom him to work as a resurrection man. When a woman suiting Quinn’s purposes dies, the clock starts ticking. The story becomes—in its grim way—a caper. Job is trying to dig up a body that is decomposing by the minute, a body protected by physical barriers and armed guards.

As is the case in all capers, there is a monetary motive. Job needs a big payoff if he’s going to leave his daughter enough money to escape a life in service. Scheuring says, “I was struck by the fact that human beings have this uncanny ability to turn anything into a commercial enterprise. There’s the trade in bodies, of course, but also people designing and selling mortsafes.” (Mortsafes are the metal cages and stone slabs meant to keep corpses safe from grave robbers.) “At the surface level, there’s this grotesque practice, and we imagine Igor digging up a body because he’s a freak. But there are all these layers of commerce around grave robbing, all these middlemen. And everybody involved in this trade justifies it to themselves. 

“There’s a scene in the book set at the Fortune of War, a pub right across the street from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. This is a real pub, and it’s where doctors and surgeons would have a couple of beers with their grave-robber buddies before going into a backroom to check out the wares and buy some bodies. It’s such an odd scenario, but—again—humans can turn anything into a transaction.” 

Taplin is subtly casting a glance at one of the subjects across the room.

Job knows the dance.

Taplin has been watching this one since he first arrived and took inventory of the dead on hand.

It is an obese gentleman.

Another potential buyer now circles the corpse, surveying it as one would something shiny in a shop—intrigued, but remaining coy, as a good shopper must.

The resurrection man nearby, in turn, extols the virtues of his corpse as any good shopkeeper would his wares.

The buyer, hearing the price, politely moves on.

It’s clear that Scheuring did a considerable amount of research for this project. This turns out to be something he really enjoys—and something he doesn’t have the luxury of doing as a screenwriter: “So I went to film school, but I never really wanted to get into the movie business. I wanted to write novels. Then I had the fortune—and in some ways, misfortune—of finding success in the industry.” 

“One of the things you lose as a writer working in Hollywood,” he explains, “is the freedom to explore anything in great depth. I’ve always wanted to dive deeper. I quite love the writing process, but I like the discovery process, too, and as I get older, that’s actually the great reward. I want people to like my books and my films, but I want to learn something in the process of writing them—hopefully about myself but also about the world and history and what have you.”

Even though The Resurrectionist is set in the past, Scheuring had the chance to explore a number of issues that are still relevant today—class and commodification but also scientific ethics. Grave robbing was scandalous because it was macabre, certainly, but also because people believed that someone whose corpse had been violated after death would not experience the resurrection of the dead. This was, obviously, an existential fear for Christian believers. But physicians and anatomists knew that the knowledge they gained through dissection would save lives.

Scheuring said that it was important for him to limn these contradictions and to conclude his story on a hopeful note. “This is a very dark book—a grotesque book. Still, we see the benefit of the grave robbers’ work in the end. This story couldn’t be, for me, just about a dude making money. It had to be about Job emancipating his daughter from a society that oppressed women at every turn and about Percival saving his wife. That’s the poetic payoff.”

Jessica Jernigan is a writer who lives and works in Michigan.