Cragg & Fidelis Mystery

In 1740s England, the roots of evil run deep... The year is 1740. George II is on the throne, but England's remoter provinces remain largely a law unto themselves. In Lancashire a grim discovery has been made: a squire's wife, Dolores Brockletower, lies in the woods above her home at Garlick Hall, her throat brutally slashed. Called to the scene, Coroner Titus Cragg finds the Brockletower household awash with rumor and suspicion. He enlists the help of his astute young friend, doctor Luke Fidelis, to throw light on the case. But this is a world in which forensic science is in its infancy, and policing hardly exists. Embarking on their first gripping investigation, Cragg and Fidelis are faced with the superstition of witnesses, obstruction by local officials, and denunciations from the squire himself. A Dark Anatomy marks the arrival of a remarkable new voice in mystery and a pair of detectives both cunning and complex.

Preston, 1741. The drowning of drunken publican Antony Egan is no surprise-even if it comes as an unpleasant shock to coroner Titus Cragg, whose wife was the old man's niece. But, he does his duty to the letter, and the inquest's verdict is accidental death. Meanwhile the town is agog with rumor and faction, as the General Election is only a week away and the two local seats are to be contested by four rival candidates. But, Cragg's close friend, Dr. Luke Fidelis, finds evidence to cast doubt on the events leading to Egan's demise. Soon suspicions are further roused when a well-to-do farmer collapses and it appears he was in town on political business. Is there a conspiracy afoot? The Mayor and Council have their own way of imposing order, but Cragg is determined not to be swayed by their pressure. With the help of Fidelis's scientific ingenuity, the true criminals are brought to light.

In The Hidden Man, Robin Blake continues the series Booklist calls "a solid winner" with a darkly rich mystery centered on an apparent suicide that leads Cragg and Fidelis down a treacherous path. The year is 1742, and the people of Preston are looking forward to their ancient once-every-twenty-years festival of merriment and excess, the Preston Guild. But the prospect darkens as the town plunges into a financial crisis caused by the death of pawnbroker and would-be banker Philip Pimbo, shot behind the locked door of his office. Is it suicide? Coroner Titus Cragg suspects so, but Dr Luke Fidelis disagrees. To untangle the truth Cragg must dig out the secrets of Pimbo's personal life, learn the grim facts of the African slave trade, search for a missing Civil War treasure and deal with the machinations of his old enemy Ephraim Grimshaw, now the town's mayor. Cragg relies once again on the help and advice of his analytical friend Fidelis, his astute wife Elizabeth and the contents of a well-stocked library. As in his previous Cragg and Fidelis stories, Robin Blake brings a vivid cast of characters to the page in this third historical mystery about the dramas that breeds below the surface of life in a provincial Georgian town.

It's 1743, and the tanners of Preston are a pariah community, plying their unwholesome trade beside a stretch of riverside marsh where many Prestonians by ancient right graze their livestock. When the body of a newborn child is found in one of their tanning pits, Cragg's inquiry falls foul of a cabal of merchants dead set on modernizing the town's economy and regarding the despised tanners-and Cragg's apparent championship of them-as obstacles to their plan. The murder of a baby is just the evidence they need to get rid of the tanners once and for all. But the inquest into the baby's death is disrupted when the inn where it is being held mysteriously burns down, and Cragg himself faces a charge of lewdness, jeopardizing his whole future as a coroner. But the fates have not finished playing with him just yet. The sudden and suspicious death of a very prominent person may just, with the help of Fidelis's sharp forensic skills, bring about Cragg's redemption...

Titus Cragg and his friend Luke Fidelis investigate macabre goings-on in a remote Lancashire village in this intriguing 18th century mystery. It's the sweltering summer of 1744 and when an epidemic disease threatens the town, coroner Titus Cragg retires with his wife and baby son to a remote village in East Lancashire, where he hopes his family will enjoy the healthy and tranquil air. But Cragg finds the rural atmosphere anything but peaceful when he's called upon to investigate the horrific death of a local woman who has fallen victim to a cruel community punishment. Assisted by his friend Dr. Luke Fidelis, Cragg begins to probe the village's prejudices and simmering hatreds, as he untangles cross-currents of suspicion, rivalry and rural customs which are very different from the ways he knows in the town. Then another local woman disappears, and events take a disturbing new twist…

Lancashire, 1745. The Young Pretender is marching south to claim the English throne. Meanwhile, Coroner Titus Cragg searches for the head belonging to a decapitated body found in a pond. As simmering tensions split the town, Cragg finds himself arrested for murder, and must team up with his old friend, Dr Luke Fidelis, to expose the real killer.

The discovery of a body in a pigsty, shot to death, leads Coroner Titus Cragg and Dr Luke Fidelis into a complex and baffling murder investigation. April, 1746. When County Coroner Titus Cragg is called to examine a body found shot to death at a local farm, he finds himself drawn into a bizarre and complex case where nothing is as it first appears. As he questions those who knew the victim, it becomes clear that not everyone is telling him the whole truth. Could the motive for the murder lie in a dangerous contract the dead man had signed more than twenty years before, a so-called tontine agreement? Just what does the victim's enigmatic lawyer, Ambrose Parr, know that he's not revealing? As he and Dr Luke Fidelis attempt to track down the six other signatories to the contract, Titus realizes that if they do not find answers - and fast - more violent deaths will surely follow.

When a blackened body is discovered buried beneath a hot-house, Coroner Titus Cragg uncovers a tale of scandalous secrets stretching back almost twenty years. "Coroner Cragg. You think you can find out what happened at this house? You are mistaken. You can never find out." November, 1747. County Coroner Titus Cragg has been called to the scene of a gruesome slaughter at a rural farmhouse: a mother and her four children brutally murdered in their own home. Were they killed by the man who should have protected them: their husband and father? And what role is played by the peculiar religious cult the family belongs to? Perhaps the mute boy who lives in the dog kennel knows the truth. Meanwhile, Titus's friend Dr. Luke Fidelis is a guest of wealthy landowner and local magistrate John Blackburne at nearby Orford Hall. When a blackened but well-preserved body is discovered deep beneath Blackburne's hot-house, Cragg and Fidelis are asked to investigate. But how can they make headway when, as they soon learn, this corpse might have been in the ground for centuries? Gradually, Titus pieces together a tale of secrets, scandal and thwarted passion - and uncovers a shocking connection between the body under the hothouse and the slaughter in the farmhouse.