Skin and Bone

In Blake’s richly imagined fourth 18th-century historical set in Preston, England (after 2015’s The Hidden Man), a dead newborn turns up in a tanner’s noxious “skin yard.” Titus Cragg, the redoubtable coroner, won’t cease trying to find out whether the baby was murdered and the identity of the parents—even though it seems as if half the town is desperate to stop him. Assisted by the excitable physician Luke Fidelis, Cragg learns that the infant was indeed killed. But despite all obstacles—including a truly terrifying (and suspicious) fire, mid-inquest—Cragg also comes to believe that the place the corpse was found may be key to a cabal’s plan to drive out the despised tanners and transform the town. The mystery’s strengths are the author’s skillful command of a large cast of characters, all of them nuanced and original, and his enterprising use of Georgian-era methods of investigating a homicide when examining a corpse was itself problematic and the powerful could legally demolish those who posed too many uncomfortable questions. (Oct.)