The Hidden Man

Starred review from January 19, 2015
Set in 1742, British author Blake’s superior third whodunit featuring Dr. Luke Fidelis and coroner Titus Cragg (after 2013’s Dark Waters) centers on an impossible crime. When Philip Pimbo—a merchant and goldsmith in Preston, England, who has ambitions of opening his own private bank—is discovered shot to death behind the locked door of his office, Fidelis rejects the obvious explanation that Pimbo took his own life. The doctor is sure that he would have first shot his pet dog, which was always with him, before turning the gun on himself. “The man that kills himself, first kills his dog—that’s a proverb in Ireland,” Fidelis notes. Meanwhile, Cragg, an executor of Pimbo’s estate, is under pressure to resolve the dead man’s business matters from Preston’s mayor, who’s desperate to recover the town’s money that was entrusted to Pimbo. The sleuths are an entertaining duo, and Blake again couples skillful plotting with authentic period details.

January 1, 2015
It's 1742. Blake returns to the English town of Preston, where a rash of crimes challenges a coroner and a physician. Coroner Titus Cragg and his friend and confidant Dr. Luke Fidelis have solved difficult puzzles before (Dark Waters, 2013, etc.). But a series of seemingly unconnected mysteries will tax their ingenuity. First, Cragg is called to the scene of the death of goldsmith Phillip Pimbo, shot dead while sitting at his desk in a locked room. Although it looks like suicide, Fidelis has several ideas about how it could have been an accident or murder. Mayor Grimshaw is furious when no funds are found in the room. Pimbo had been given the Preston Corporation's assets and placed them with the help of the mysterious Zadok Moon in a scheme to make more money. A client Fidelis has been treating for free, a poor man suffering from a stroke, has in his possession a silver spoon that may have been part of a treasure, missing since the days of Cromwell, which had also belonged to the corporation. As Pimbo's lawyer, Cragg must settle his estate. Accordingly, he and Fidelis go to Liverpool after a perusal of Pimbo's papers shows that he and Moon had invested the corporation's money in a scheme to buy slaves in Africa, sell them in the Indies and buy goods which could be sold for a large profit in England. The ship was heavily insured, but to the mayor's disgust, an investigator for the insurance company suspects fraud, so the corporation may still lose money. When the investigator is found conveniently beaten to death, it's up to the two sleuthing friends to tie together the chain of strange incidents. An engagingly detailed look at good and ill in the 1700s that's cleverly entwined with several perplexing mysteries.

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February 1, 2015

Every 20 years, the English town of Preston celebrates the Preston Guild festival, yet this year, 1742, points to a dark future as the community is pushed to the brink of financial ruin: would-be banker Philip Pimbo is dead by gunshot in his locked office, and the town's funds are missing. Coroner Titus Cragg suspects Pimbo's death might be suicide, but Dr. Luke Fidelis disagrees. Still the men work together to uncover the truth. Faced with Pimbo's secrets, a missing treasure dating from the English Civil War, and the dark facts of the African slave trade, Cragg relies on his wits and those of his wife, Elizabeth, and friend Fidelis to solve the mysteries of their hometown. VERDICT Rich in Georgian historical details, this period mystery follows the previous two entries (A Dark Anatomy and Dark Waters) in exploring the dark depths of a small provincial English town and its inhabitants. The lively, collegial interplay between Cragg and Fidelis and narrator Cragg's observational tone will keep readers engrossed until the puzzle's resolution. Readers who relish their sleuths with an 18th-century flavor, especially fans of Bruce Alexander's Sir John Fielding and Deryn Lake's John Rowling, may want to investigate this promising series. [Library marketing.]

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Starred review from February 15, 2015
Blake brings Georgian England to vivid life in his mysteries. In the third installment, set in 1742, Richardson's Pamela is all the rage, the narrator of the tale is enthusiastic about the essays of Addison and Steele, and the town pawnbroker has Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress hanging on his office wall. The series stars two friends who live in a tiny village in the north of England, one a coroner and the other a physician. Both accustomed to thinking about the causes of death, they work together to solve murders and puzzling deaths. The coroner, Titus Cragg, narrates how he and Dr. Luke Fidelis proceed. Cragg's robust and direct voice is one of the series highlights; fortunately, Blake doesn't try to imitate eighteenth-century language by making the prose elaborate. Here the town pawnbroker and money lender is found shot to death in his office, which was locked from the inside. Everyone except Cragg believes this was a suicide, but Cragg suspects murder. He investigates the pawnbroker's home life, which has disturbing resemblances to the master-servant dynamics in Pamela. A single silver spoon carries links to a treasure trove supposedly buried on the moor by a soldier in the English Civil War. This is both an engaging mystery and a revealing window into Georgian England.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)