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tobyyy's review
4.0
Work from home 2020: book 21.
A well-crafted historical mystery that takes place in Restoration London — this was my first by Susanna Gregory and it won’t be my last. This was at least as satisfying as the books by Ellis Peters that I’ve read. My only complaint was that there were a lot of characters and it took me awhile to get them straightened out.
A well-crafted historical mystery that takes place in Restoration London — this was my first by Susanna Gregory and it won’t be my last. This was at least as satisfying as the books by Ellis Peters that I’ve read. My only complaint was that there were a lot of characters and it took me awhile to get them straightened out.
roshk99's review against another edition
4.0
Fantastic book! Chaloner weaves through the highly complex political intrigue of Restoration London with ease. His ready wit and superior deductive skills make the book an entertaining read. The many twists and turns of this book make the reader gasp at new developments.
tasmanian_bibliophile's review against another edition
4.0
‘He died of eating cucumbers.’
London, 1663. It is summer, and Thomas Chaloner has recently returned to London after a mission to Portugal and Spain. He may have only been away for four months, but a lot has changed. A tax has been introduced on printed newssheets which has led to the growth of handwritten pamphlets.
There are two main producers of these pamphlets, and there is intense rivalry between them to be the first to disseminate any sort of news. This rivalry is the talk of the coffee houses. Robert l’Estrange has been appointed to censor the newssheets, but he is a hypocrite who also profits by disseminating the news.
Thomas Chaloner learns that his friend Thomas Maylord, a musician, has died, apparently from eating green cucumbers. Thomas reports to his employer, the Earl of Clarendon, who orders him to investigate the strange death of one of l’Estrange’s lackeys, a solicitor named Newburne, who died after eating some green cucumber.
And so the search for truth begins. While some physicians claim that eating green cucumbers is dangerous, surely the death of two men within days of each other cannot be a coincidence. Are there links between Maylord and Newburne ? What role might l’Estrange have to play in this?
‘I am beset by phanatiques on all sides and music is the only thing that gives me the resolve to do battle with them.’
It seems that Newburne had ties to the mysterious ‘Butcher of Smithfield’, whose thugs control the area around the Smithfield market. Thomas Chaloner doesn’t believe that the deaths have been caused by the ingestion of cucumbers, but in order to prove his theory he needs to try to discover the real identity of the Butcher of Smithfield as well as try to find out how the news makes its way into the handwritten pamphlets. There will be more victims, and Thomas Chaloner needs to be careful he doesn’t become one of them.
‘Poor Finch. Another victim of the wicked curse of the cucumber.’
There are several different strands to this story and, while they are all brought together by the end of the book, it takes concentration to keep track of them. There are many characters as well, including a number of historical figures.
I enjoyed this novel, especially as it took me a while to work out who the Butcher of Smithfield was. Now I need to track down a copy of the next book.
This is the third novel in Ms Gregory’s Thomas Chaloner mystery series set in Restoration England. Thirteen novels have been published so far.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
London, 1663. It is summer, and Thomas Chaloner has recently returned to London after a mission to Portugal and Spain. He may have only been away for four months, but a lot has changed. A tax has been introduced on printed newssheets which has led to the growth of handwritten pamphlets.
There are two main producers of these pamphlets, and there is intense rivalry between them to be the first to disseminate any sort of news. This rivalry is the talk of the coffee houses. Robert l’Estrange has been appointed to censor the newssheets, but he is a hypocrite who also profits by disseminating the news.
Thomas Chaloner learns that his friend Thomas Maylord, a musician, has died, apparently from eating green cucumbers. Thomas reports to his employer, the Earl of Clarendon, who orders him to investigate the strange death of one of l’Estrange’s lackeys, a solicitor named Newburne, who died after eating some green cucumber.
And so the search for truth begins. While some physicians claim that eating green cucumbers is dangerous, surely the death of two men within days of each other cannot be a coincidence. Are there links between Maylord and Newburne ? What role might l’Estrange have to play in this?
‘I am beset by phanatiques on all sides and music is the only thing that gives me the resolve to do battle with them.’
It seems that Newburne had ties to the mysterious ‘Butcher of Smithfield’, whose thugs control the area around the Smithfield market. Thomas Chaloner doesn’t believe that the deaths have been caused by the ingestion of cucumbers, but in order to prove his theory he needs to try to discover the real identity of the Butcher of Smithfield as well as try to find out how the news makes its way into the handwritten pamphlets. There will be more victims, and Thomas Chaloner needs to be careful he doesn’t become one of them.
‘Poor Finch. Another victim of the wicked curse of the cucumber.’
There are several different strands to this story and, while they are all brought together by the end of the book, it takes concentration to keep track of them. There are many characters as well, including a number of historical figures.
I enjoyed this novel, especially as it took me a while to work out who the Butcher of Smithfield was. Now I need to track down a copy of the next book.
This is the third novel in Ms Gregory’s Thomas Chaloner mystery series set in Restoration England. Thirteen novels have been published so far.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
vesper1931's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.0
1663 Thomas Chaloner has returned to England but his paymaster the Earl of Clarendon has a job for him. To investigate the death of newsbook minion and solicitor Thomas Newburne, presumed dead by eating cucumbers. Soon Chaloner uncovers more deaths but what is the motive, by what means and who is behind the deaths.
An entertaining historical mystery.
An entertaining historical mystery.
sadouglas's review against another edition
2.0
Susanna Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew books are entertaining if slight medieval murder mysteries set in and around 14th century Cambridge University. More efficient than inspired, they're the kind of books you buy to take on holiday and then leave in the hotel for the next guest.
They pass the time enjoyably enough, but you're unlikely ever to want to re-read them, basically.
What they're definitely not is Patricia Finney style medieval spy novels, A Smiley FOR Elizabethan times, with richly described historical detail, intricate and logically consistent plots and a cast of finely sketched characters moving around a wholly believable world.
Which is why I should have suspected Gregory's second series of historical detective novels might be a bridge too far for the author - and for the reader. The Thomas Challoner books are set immediately post the restoration of Charles II, with the eponymous hero a spy for the Earl of Clarendon - a position he formally held under Cromwell's government. It's a promising set up and an interesting and relatively unexplored period, but where in the hands of a Finney or Martin Steven I'd expect something deep and layered, here the prose is at best workmanlike and - more importantly - the central puzzle has so obvious a solution that the failure of Challoner to spot it for several hundred pages serves only to make him look an idiot.
An incredibly straight-forward and obvious anagram turned ludicrous co-incidence, a scattering of clues so completely telegraphed that they may as well have been written in a different font to the rest of the text and a tendency to change the intelligence of each character from page to page in order to shove the story onwards, made this a real struggle to read.
Add in a habit (admittedly slightly less pronounced than in the Bartholomew novels) of devoting paragraph after paragraph to pointless and unconnected historical data which serves merely to highlight that the author has done some background reading, and this is a book - and I suspect series - to avoid like the mysterious and poisonous cucumbers which kick off the mystery (that's not as interesting as it sounds, incidentally).
They pass the time enjoyably enough, but you're unlikely ever to want to re-read them, basically.
What they're definitely not is Patricia Finney style medieval spy novels, A Smiley FOR Elizabethan times, with richly described historical detail, intricate and logically consistent plots and a cast of finely sketched characters moving around a wholly believable world.
Which is why I should have suspected Gregory's second series of historical detective novels might be a bridge too far for the author - and for the reader. The Thomas Challoner books are set immediately post the restoration of Charles II, with the eponymous hero a spy for the Earl of Clarendon - a position he formally held under Cromwell's government. It's a promising set up and an interesting and relatively unexplored period, but where in the hands of a Finney or Martin Steven I'd expect something deep and layered, here the prose is at best workmanlike and - more importantly - the central puzzle has so obvious a solution that the failure of Challoner to spot it for several hundred pages serves only to make him look an idiot.
An incredibly straight-forward and obvious anagram turned ludicrous co-incidence, a scattering of clues so completely telegraphed that they may as well have been written in a different font to the rest of the text and a tendency to change the intelligence of each character from page to page in order to shove the story onwards, made this a real struggle to read.
Add in a habit (admittedly slightly less pronounced than in the Bartholomew novels) of devoting paragraph after paragraph to pointless and unconnected historical data which serves merely to highlight that the author has done some background reading, and this is a book - and I suspect series - to avoid like the mysterious and poisonous cucumbers which kick off the mystery (that's not as interesting as it sounds, incidentally).
fenwench's review
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
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