Book Review: The Seeker by S.G. Maclean

This beautifully written historical crime novel is set London in 1654, a time when speaking your mind could result in a trip to the Tower and having the wrong friends could lead to your execution. And if you thought you could escape the attentions of Cromwell’s government, or play a double game, you’d be reckoning without the Seeker. Cromwell’s enigmatic and feared special agent would hunt you down mercilessly.

When John Winter, one of Cromwell’s supporters, is found murdered not far from the living quarters of the Protector himself, it falls to Damian Seeker to unravel a fiendishly complicated plot to strike at the heart of the government. Will he discover who killed John Winter and prevent the assassination of Oliver Cromwell?

The fact that John Winter had been married to the daughter of a prominent Cavalier and held secrets of his own, muddies the waters. A young lawyer and author of dangerously critical political pamphlets, Elias Ellingworth, inadvertently caught up in a royalist plot, is arrested for John Winter’s murder and imprisoned in the Tower where he is tortured pending his hearing. Yet Cromwell’s agent is not convinced of Ellingworth’s guilt, even though he was found standing over the dead body, holding a knife.

Damian Seeker is portrayed as a ruthless man without emotion, single-mindedly committed to his task of bringing the true culprit to justice. Can anyone penetrate the invisible wall that Damian Seeker has put up around him? And who does the dog belong to which protects the beautiful Maria, sister of the hapless Ellingworth, when she is left alone and destitute after her brother’s arrest? Can anyone find justice or happiness in such volatile times? 

S.G. Maclean, winner of Historical Dagger