Hungry Death

Set in 1747, Blake’s superior eighth mystery featuring coroner Titus Cragg and physician Luke Fidelis (after 2021’s Secret Mischief) finds Cragg summoned to a gruesome crime scene near Warrington, England. At a farmhouse, Betty Kidd and her four small children have been murdered by someone who used different killing methods—throat-slitting, bludgeoning, and smothering. Betty’s missing husband, Billy, is suspected of the crime, possibly motivated by despair over his financial position. Cragg finds Billy’s hanged corpse in the Kidds’ barn, but he isn’t convinced the man died by suicide. There’s a witness, an eight-year-old boy, but he’s mute and unable to convey what he witnessed. Fidelis happens to be a guest of a nearby landowner, John Blackburne, and uses his forensic skills to assist Cragg. Cragg pursues a suggestion that the Kidds’ unusual religion—the rare Eatanswillians sect—may have played a part in the massacre, until the discovery of an apparently centuries-old body on Blackburne’s property offers a different possibility. The solution is both fair and satisfying. Blake again demonstrates why he belongs in the first rank of historical mystery novelists. Agent: Cara Jones, RCW Literary (U.K.). (May)