Skin and Bone
1743 Preston is a quiet place, where the coroner can enjoy an afternoon at the bowling green – until a dead baby is fished out of a tanning pit at the skin-yard. Preston has little love for the tanners, so it is not long before the public finger is pointed against them as the perpetrators of the crime, but coroner Titus Cragg won’t have prejudice stand in the way of justice. The local Corporation, though, has other ideas: bent on evicting the tanners to “improve” the town, they have many ways to make the coroner’s life miserable. It will take all of Cragg’s ingenuity – and that of his friend, Doctor Luke Fidelis – to unravel the tangle. What a lovely whodunit – full of lively detail, well researched, and pleasantly narrated. I’ll be sure to read the three previous installments in the Cragg and Fidelis series.
