Helpful Score: 2
CONTAINS SPOILERS
I really liked the main character, a coroner in 1740's England and his doctor friend who performs autopsies. However, there wasn't all that much to the autopsy piece of the mystery. There was also lots of extra detail you didn't need to solve the puzzle (distances between places and how long it took on horseback to reach them). I enjoyed the secondary characters and glimpses into what life was like at the time more than the mystery.
I really liked the main character, a coroner in 1740's England and his doctor friend who performs autopsies. However, there wasn't all that much to the autopsy piece of the mystery. There was also lots of extra detail you didn't need to solve the puzzle (distances between places and how long it took on horseback to reach them). I enjoyed the secondary characters and glimpses into what life was like at the time more than the mystery.
First in a series. Set in 1740, Titus Cragg is the local coroner and is good friends with the doctor Luke Fidelis. A woman of the gentry has been found in the forest, her throat cut, and Cragg must convene an inquest to determine the cause. I really liked the style, Blake chose telling it in first person and so the language is sort of archaic - I feel like it gives a good sense of place and time. Good descriptions about how long it took to travel places and some of the professions back then, and the superstitious villagers were interesting. And there are plenty of flashes of humor as Cragg talks about his wife and his friends. I'm guessing that Cragg gets filled out better as the series goes on...how many lawyers/coroners in 1740 had a library that included books with werewolf legends? And the ending was fun, Blake gives the reader some clues but I did not anticipate the ending at all, nice to be surprised. I can't believe I'm going to add yet another series to my TBR list, but so it is.
