Hungry death

Set in 1747, Blake's superior eighth mystery featuring coroner Titus Cragg and physician Luke Fidelis (after 2021's Secret Mischief) finds Cragg summoned to a gruesome crime scene near Warrington, England. At a farmhouse, Betty Kidd and her four small children have been murdered by someone who used different killing methods--throat-slitting, bludgeoning, and smothering. Betty's missing husband, Billy, is suspected of the crime, possibly motivated by despair over his financial position. Cragg finds Billy's hanged corpse in the Kidds' barn, but he isn't convinced the man died by suicide. There's a witness, an eight-year-old boy, but he's mute and unable to convey what he witnessed. Fidelis happens to be a guest of a nearby landowner, John Blackburne, and uses his forensic skills to assist Cragg. Cragg pursues a suggestion that the Kidds' unusual religion--the rare Eatanswillians sect--may have played a part in the massacre, until the discovery of an apparently centuries-old body on Blackburne's property offers a different possibility. The solution is both fair and satisfying. Blake again demonstrates why he belongs in the first rank of historical mystery novelists. Agent: Cara Jones, RCW Literary (U.K.). (May)

Coroner Titus Cragg is called upon to investigate a brutal multiple murder. No one is willing to show Cragg the way to the farm of Billy Kidd, but when he finally arrives, he finds a woman with her throat cut along with two little girls and their brothers, all dead. Even the family horse has been shot. In a doghouse Cragg discovers a nonverbal boy and a dog; the body of Kidd hangs in the barn. It looks as if Kidd killed his family and himself, but Cragg has doubts when he learns of the strange religious views Kidd and his neighbors held. On his way to see Kidd's landlord, magistrate John Blackburne of Orford Hall, Cragg meets Dr. Luke Fidelis, his best friend and frequent partner in investigations, who's visiting the hall at the request of a Frenchman he once studied with. Soon he and Cragg are investigating the body of a young woman found buried under Blackburne's hothouse. Her remains are surprisingly well-preserved considering that they're probably 50 years old. Cragg questions Kidd's brother, old and new enemies, and people who might be able to identify the body. The answers to all the deaths may lie in a strange religion and past misdeeds that challenge Cragg to be exceptionally clever to ferret out the truth in one of his most difficult cases. Odd 18th-century mores provide a fitting backdrop for a complex puzzle. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.