A Plague of Sinners

Starred review from May 23, 2011
Restoration London under threat of the plague makes a marvelously claustrophobic setting for Lawrence's outstanding second historical thriller featuring clerk-turned-investigator Harry Lytle (after The Sweet Smell of Decay). When the earl of St. Albans is found hanging in the Vintners' Hall, Lord Arlington, head of the intelligence service and Lytle's "lord and master," summons Lytle and his partner, butcher Davy Dowling. The obvious suspect is Henry Burke, a wine merchant the earl cheated. A wine bottle shoved into the corpse's jaw as well as gold coins buried in the eye sockets help reinforce Burke's guilt. Despite the pleas of Lytle's wife that they flee the city for safer ground, more murders, apparently by the same hand, keep Lytle in London. Lawrence gives an unflinching view of the brutality of the period, but the violence is always in service of the carefully developed plot.