A killer dressed as a plague doctor is prowling London’s docks.
Able seaman Humphrey Wilkes is dead, shot between the eyes by the murderer known as the Plague Doctor. When Samuel Pepys’s naval colleague, Robert Drake, finds a black cross daubed on his door, it marks him out as the next victim.
Pepys dispatches his inquisitors, Abby Harcourt and Jacob Standish, to the docks. Can they unmask the killer and save Drake’s life before he strikes again?
Death is a way of life to hardened seafarers. The dockyard is theirs – a dangerous domain of secrets, lies and grudges dating back to the grim days of the plague. Anyone could be the Plague Doctor. But who lurks beneath that ghastly disguise?
When the Plague Doctor targets Jacob himself, the battle to save Drake becomes personal.
Ellis Blackwood fell in love with the writings of Samuel Pepys, and the 17th-century England he inhabited, through the great man’s published diaries. The Samuel Pepys Mysteries are the result of that literary love affair.
My thoughts: The Great Fire of London is cooling, the buildings are smouldering and Samuel Pepys has a problem he needs his two inquisitors to look into.
Down in Deptford, at the docks, a world away from Pepys’ home and life at court, a murderer dressed as a plague doctor has been at work. Abby and Jacob are sent to investigate. It’s something of a closed world at the dockyard and hard work to get anything out of the residents. Life at sea and on the docks is hard and death happens suddenly, but even here, a murderer is a strange event.
Clever and full of historical detail – one of my favourite historical facts is that Pepys buried his cheese in the garden to save it from the Fire, and the flavour of 17th Century London, both familiar and completely alien at the same time.
This series just gets better with every book and Abby is really coming to the fore as a crack investigator, despite regarding herself as just a house maid. She really needs to talk to Pepys about a proper promotion and pay rise! Jacob is still a bit wet, and needs to stop worrying about what people think of him – Samuel Pepys clearly thinks he’s a man who’s going places.
It’s a good plot too, lots of suspects and twists and the duo find more than they expected in a dockside pub, clever little tattoos that lead them to gambling and other secrets.
Don’t forget to head to the author’s website for the free short story that started it all, when Samuel Pepys’ famous diaries go missing.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 
Thank you so much for being a part of the tour x
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