Death Comes Hot

October 12, 2020
At the start of Jecks’s diverting fifth outing for Jack Blackjack (after 2019’s The Dead Don’t Wait), Jack, a cutpurse and rogue in 16th-century London, tries unsuccessfully to evade an unwelcome visitor, inept public executioner Hal Westmecott, who holds a knife to his throat. Hal, who blames Jack for selling him black powder that didn’t ignite when he tried to burn a priest to death, forces Jack into searching for Hal’s vanished wife and son. Jack’s efforts on Hal’s behalf lead to him being attacked and rendered unconscious. He also stumbles on a dead body, and a subsequent murder could have something to do with the rivalry between Catholic Queen Mary and her Protestant half-sister, the Lady Elizabeth. Never mind some confusing plot twists and the often frantic pace. The main draw is high-spirited Jack, with his Bertie Woosterish commentary (“I don’t know whether you have ever experienced such a sensation. There is something particularly unpleasant about being brought up short by a length of steel at the Adam’s apple”). Fans of offbeat Tudor mysteries will clamor for more. Agent: Joanna Swainson, Hardman & Swainson (U.K.).

October 1, 2020
A maladroit assassin leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. Jack Blackjack has had the use of a nice little house and a servant ever since the former cutpurse accidentally secured a job as an assassin for John Blount, who's working to replace Catholic Queen Mary with her half sister, Princess Elizabeth. Jack is useless as a killer, but his targets have obligingly died in accidents or at others' hands. When public executioner Hal Westmecott accuses Jack of selling him bad black powder, which he uses to give people being burned at the stake a quicker end, he agrees to forgive Jack if he can find the wife and son who left him. The job thrusts Jack into a cauldron of plots and fake identities guaranteed to get the cowardly assassin into endless trouble. Escaping murder by the brother of a priest who was burned at the stake and by friends of the mysterious woman and son, Jack eventually learns that Hal's an imposter who has no wife and no son: The child he's looking for is part of a plot to get rid of Elizabeth. So when he finally finds the boy, he hides him away in the country while trying to solve his own problems. Unfortunately, Blount also wants the boy killed. Jack must hope that it's better to be lucky than talented when it comes to discharging, or escaping, his repugnant duties. Plenty of historical detail, loads of twists and turns, and a hilarious tale of criminal ineptitude.

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