Cry of the Hangman, The
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Murder always sells. But when a series of dark and puzzling crimes takes place in seventeenth-century London, will printer’s apprentice Lucy Campion be publishing the news – or starring in it?
London, 1667. Printer’s apprentice Lucy Campion is unsettled when, on a frozen December morning after church, an elderly woman dressed in mourning clothes whispers an ominous warning in her ear.
Lucy sternly tells herself it’s nonsense, but then her much-loved former master, Magistrate Hargrave, is viciously attacked with a brass hourglass during a break-in. But what exactly was the intruder searching for? And why did they first stop to steal a piece of Cook’s lamb and lentil pie?
The puzzling case is just the start of a series of dark, bizarre crimes. Lucy’s determined to uncover the truth and see that justice is done. But someone is equally determined to stop her – whatever it takes.
This page-turning historical mystery set in Renaissance London is a great choice for readers who like their heroines lively, their mysteries twisty and their historical settings brimming with authenticity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1667 London, Calkins's twisty sixth Lucy Campion whodunit (after 2020's The Sign of the Gallows) finds former servant Lucy thriving as a bookseller's employee. She now produces books and writes true crime accounts, albeit without being credited as their author. Her oral recitation of one of her grim stories is interrupted by a rival orator, who recounts the gory tale of a fraudulent tooth-puller, Geoffrey Knight, whose botched procedure led to a death several years earlier. The Donnetts—a soap maker and his wife—provided the damning testimony that sent Knight to the gallows. Soon after Lucy hears about the case, the Donnetts are murdered—the wife stabbed with scissors, the husband scalded by lye dumped on his head. Lucy investigates the killings and their possible link to an assault on her former master, magistrate Thomas Hargrave, by someone who stole Hargrave's private papers. Calkins makes her lead's sleuthing plausible while playing scrupulously fair with readers, few of whom will identify the murderer before Lucy does. This series keeps getting better.
