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BLOOD ON THE STRAND
by Susannah Gregory
Sphere, January 2007
480 pages
17.99 GBP
ISBN: 1847440029


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

In BLOOD ON THE STRAND, the second volume in Susannah Gregory's promising Thomas Chaloner series, Restoration London spy Chaloner is hardly back from Ireland, and from the heartbreak he suffered in the last book, when he confronts a new problem.

London shipping mogul Matthew Webb has been murdered on his way home from a Guinea Company dinner party. Near-universally hated for his mean manners, obnoxious wife, and involvement in the escalating Atlantic slave trade, Webb could have been killed by anyone.

When an apparent Irish rebel named Dillon is accused and Chaloner's espionage colleague Adrian May kills a man who claims that Dillon is innocent, Chaloner is called upon to investigate the matter. Who killed Webb, and why? Is Dillon innocent? And whose side is May really on?

Gregory tells an extremely complicated tale with great clarity and riveting excitement. Her well-researched world goes beyond the usual depiction of Restoration England. Charles II is heard of but almost never seen. His court takes a back seat to middle and working-class society, and to communities in that society that are dramatized less often than court intrigue.

Chaloner's investigations take him on a tour of the clandestine workings of the Chirurgeon's Guild, where medical researchers and anatomical showmen scheme to get cadavers for dissection – a rare resource made rarer by courtiers who have joined the new fad for watching 'private anatomies.' In this plot thread, Gregory explores the continuing issue of moral panics about medical research. .

Gregory's dialogue is snappy and often humorous, a difficult feat to pull off with such bleak and morbid subject matter. When Chaloner visits a friend's house and enters by picking the lock, the friend comes nonchalantly downstairs to remark: "I wish you would not do that. What is so wrong with knocking?" Chaloner responds: "You need a better lock." Chaloner's attempt to masquerade as a Dutch upholsterer is also the source of some tense comedy.

The object of the tough, terse Chaloner's current affections is another spy, the pragmatic, scheming, yet empathetic Eaffrey Johnson. Those readers who know this woman, under her later-life alias, as the first professional woman playwright in English history, will be able to resolve one plot point almost immediately, but the rest of the story remains mysterious. Gregory's Eaffrey has all the smarts of a film noir femme fatale, but much more self-sufficiency and heart. Current research that suggests that the real Eaffrey was a spy vindicates Gregory's bold choice.

I look forward to seeing what kind of trouble Chaloner gets into next, and whether he and Eaffrey will meet again.

Reviewed by Rebecca Nesvet, April 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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