The Plague Road by L.C. Tyler

If you had to hide a body, which location would you choose? Can you think of anywhere your corpse  would never be discovered?  In his latest John Grey historical mystery, author L.C. Tyler came up with a cracker – a plague pit.

We are all familiar with the Plague of 1348 which wiped out between half and a third of the population of Europe. However, we are often less familiar with the deadly plagues which revisited various areas of Europe at different points in time, for example in London in 1657 when this book was set.

For those of you who have not come across the protagonist John Grey, he’s a lawyer and kind-of fixer who has successfully navigated the changing murky political waters from Parliament and the Great Protector through to the restoration of the monarchy. And what is even more amazing is that despite changing allegiance with the turn of fortune, he hasn’t lost the reputation of being a man of integrity. Loyal first to Cromwell and now to King Charles, he helps fix problems, for a price. Every government needs a John Grey.

John Grey is hired to find a mysterious letter which could either embarrass or destroy people, very important people. Under normal circumstances this would be a tricky enough situation, but investigating during an outbreak of the plague is both difficult and dangerous. And there is no shortage of corpses either.

Published in hardback at £19.99 in October 2016 by Constable, this is the third book in the John Grey series.

(Indiana Brown)