Death Among the Ruins
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Midnight assignations, dresses fit to meet the queen . . . and murder most horrid! Printer's apprentice Lucy Campion investigates a puzzling death in this thrilling historical mystery set in seventeenth-century London.
London, 1668. Printer’s apprentice Lucy Campion is suspicious when she meets a young ragpicker who claims to have fine clothes to sell from a lady of quality. Are the garments stolen . . . or a sign of something worse?
Her suspicions are soon realized when the clothes are identified as belonging to a recently deceased elderly aristocrat. Young Mercy Sykes has robbed a grave! Mercy is arrested, and it’s only thanks to Lucy’s intervention that the ragpicker, who's struggling to support her family, isn’t locked up.
Lucy doesn’t expect to see Mercy again, but their meeting soon has unexpected consequences. For when Mercy finds a dead woman in the ruins of Christchurch, dressed in unexpected finery, it’s to Lucy who she turns for help . . .
Lucy Campion is a feisty working-class heroine, plying her trade as a printer's apprentice in Renaissance London. If you're new to the series (it's safe to jump right in), we can't wait for you to meet her in this twisty, puzzle-packed historical mystery, brimming with authenticity!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Calkins's seventh whodunit featuring Lucy Campion, 17th-century London servant turned printer's apprentice (after 2021's The Cry of the Hangman), pales in comparison to prior entries. While selling her boss's publications, Lucy happens upon rag seller Mercy Sykes, who's been accused of robbing finery from a corpse in order to sell it; she claims she did so under duress from a thug who assaulted her and threatened her sister. Sympathetic, Lucy persuades her friend, Constable Duncan, not to pursue charges against the woman. Sykes reenters Campion's life when she appears at the latter's printing office to seek help after finding a female corpse in the street with head wounds that suggest foul play. Seeking to identify the woman and find her killer, Campion launches an inquiry that takes her to the household of a shadowy government banker. While Campion is pleasant enough company, and series fans may be satisfied by a few new developments in her personal life, Calkins fails to make this investigation memorable—the central mystery is resolved in a disappointingly anticlimactic deus ex machina. This is unlikely to win any new converts to the series.
