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    Skin and Bone: A Mystery
    Skin and Bone: A Mystery
    Skin and Bone: A Mystery
    Ebook387 pages5 hours

    Skin and Bone: A Mystery

    By Robin Blake

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    About this ebook

    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...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateOct 25, 2016
    ISBN9781250100986
    Skin and Bone: A Mystery
    Author

    Robin Blake

    Robin Blake is the author of six previous Cragg & Fidelis Mysteries, as well as acclaimed works on the artists Van Dyke and Stubbs. He has written, produced and presented extensively for radio, and is widely published as a critic. He lives in London.

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    Reviews for Skin and Bone

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    • 4/5
      Once again I find myself reading a book that is 4th in series, without having read the precious three. Such is life, don't think it affected my enjoyment of this very atmospheric historical. Learned much too since it tales place in 1743 in a town called Prescott, noted for its leather goods, bordering a march that all villagers use for grazing of their herds. A game called bowls, had heard of it before but here it is explained in detail. The art of tanning, these poor souls were looked down on by the rest because apparently the smell of the pits tended to stay with them.A dead baby is found in one of these pits, and suspicion immediately falls on the few women working the pits, this job seemed to be the occupation of families, the skill as they say, handed down from one to the next. Cragg is the local coroner, a job which was way harder back then, one just had to talk to people, follow what little evidence there was and maybe hope for enlightening information. Fidelio is the so called modern day doctor, not trusted by many yet, his ways seem to new and most instead trust the old family doc who someone manages to look at a body without any investigation and make a diagnosis. Together Fidelis and Crag will work together to solve this case which becomes much larger than it first appears. A good series, one I think will grow on me, though at times it was a little slow. So much is explained about the political environment and maneuverings, rich against poor and of course evidence is collected much more slowly without any definitive tests available. I did though feel as if I was actually back in that time period so the author did a great job creating a believable environment. Will defy Italy keep an eye out for next in series.ARC from Netgalley.
    • 4/5
      Blake does a good job of conveying information about the time and customs of 18th cent. England without resorting to dialect and forelock tugging. The mystery kept me guessing; an early guess was close, but not the answer. Something of a cliffhanger ending.

    Book preview

    Skin and Bone - Robin Blake

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