Len Tyler has, until now, been best known for his humorous Ethelred and Elsie series, in which a mid-list crime writer and his intrepid agent solved perky crimes with aplomb. This, however, is another kettle of fish, the debut volume in an ambitious historical series, featuring John Grey, a young lawyer with few clients at the time of Oliver Cromwell and Charles Stuart. Painstaking research gives the proceedings a strong patina of credibility and the main character, a man with a mission to defend the truth in a period of plots and counterplots involving the wrath of John Thurloe, Cromwell's spy master and the corpse of a Royalist spy found in an Essex village, proves engaging and sympathetic. From the success of Hilary Mantel's novels, we know the fascination the period exerts on readers; Tyler might well have found a new criminal milieu.
The theatres are padlocked. Christmas has been cancelled. It is 1657 and the unloved English Republic is eight years old. Though Cromwell's joyless grip on power appears immovable, many still look to Charles Stuart's dissolute and threadbare court-in-exile, and some are prepared to risk their lives plotting a restoration. For the officers of the Republic, constant vigilance is needed. So, when the bloody corpse of a Royalist spy is discovered on the dung heap of a small Essex village, why is the local magistrate so reluctant to investigate? John Grey, a young lawyer with no clients, finds himself alone in believing that the murdered man deserves justice. Grey is drawn into a vortex of plot and counter-plot and into the all-encompassing web of intrigue spun by Cromwell's own spy-master, John Thurloe. So when nothing is what is seems, can Grey trust anyone?
'Tyler juggles his characters, story wit and clever one liners with perfect balance.' The Times
Author
About L. C. Tyler
L C Tyler was raised in Essex and studied geography at Oxford. He has worked for the British Council in Malaysia, Sudan, Thailand and Denmark, before turning to full time writing.
