Rough Music
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Titus Cragg and his friend, Luke Fidelis, investigate macabre goings-on in a remote Lancashire village in this intriguing 18th century mystery.
It’s the sweltering summer of 1744 and when an epidemic disease threatens the town, coroner Titus Cragg retires with his wife and baby son to a remote village in East Lancashire, where he hopes his family will enjoy the healthy and tranquil air. But Cragg finds the rural atmosphere anything but peaceful when he’s called to investigate the horrific death of a local woman who has fallen victim to a cruel community punishment.
Assisted by his friend Dr. Luke Fidelis, Cragg begins to probe the village’s prejudices and simmering hatreds, as he untangles crosscurrents of suspicion, rivalry and rural customs which are very different from the ways he knows in the town. Then another local woman disappears, and events take a disturbing new twist…
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Blake's outstanding fifth 18th-century whodunit featuring coroner Titus Cragg and Dr. Luke Fidelis (after 2016's Skin and Bone), army veteran Harry Hawk and brothers Simon and Charlie Stirk decide that Anne Gargrave must be punished for being a shrew. The trio strip off most of her clothes before tying her to a stool nailed to a wooden beam and parading their humiliated victim through the East Lancashire town of Accrington. By the end of the day, Gargrave lies dead in the road. Meanwhile, Cragg arrives in the area with his savvy wife, Elizabeth, and their infant son, having decided to move residences temporarily to avoid having the child exposed to a contagious disease. When Fidelis joins him, the physician discovers that Gargrave died from inhaling mud as she lay on her face. Reports that Hawk may be an imposter, who assumed the real soldier's identity, suggest that fear of discovery may have been behind Gargrave's death. More suspicious deaths follow. Clever plotting and enjoyable characterizations make this entry a winner.
