Tony R Cox is an ex-provincial UK journalist. The Simon Jardine series is based on his memories of the early 70s - the time of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll - when reporters relied on word of mouth and there was no internet, no mobile phones, not even a fax machine.
The fourth in the Daniel Pursglove historical series is a thrilling, wonderfully penned, enveloping tale of intrigue, murder, escape and a continuing hunt for an evil killer.
The setting is early 17th century England. Daniel Pursglove is on the run. He heads back to his original home in Yorkshire, where the river runs deeply in spate and offers a fearsome additional threat to the openly dangerous prying eyes of spies and agents at every turn. King James lately of Scotland and now of England and Scotland, is in the eye of a storm and has just survived the Gunpowder Plot. Continuing fear of Catholicism runs throughout the land. Defeated Catholics are accused of any crimes that come to mind and suffer theft and abuse by triumphant Protestants without any fear of legal retribution.
Maitland has written a fascinating chronicle of those times. Notwithstanding the detailed, factual accuracy of the events, she constructs every chapter of this fiction as a work of exciting action, most of them centring on graphic, brutal violence which Pursglove escapes, but not unscathed. The chapters are each built on fulsomely portrayed and described dramatic scenes that envelop the reader. Scenic backdrops may be roughly surfaced roads, floods, riverbanks, foul-smelling alleys, even furniture and furnishings, and the descriptions help maintain a high level of tension.
Pursglove confronts the worst possible torture, maiming and execution, but still finds time to right wrongs as he travels through Yorkshire, then Bristol and finally London.
I found the closing chapters, detailing the preparations for the highly ornate masque and mountainous feast to be exquisitely funny, much helped by introducing such luminaries as Inigo Jones and Ben Jonson, real life celebrities of those years. From the celebrations there emerges a novel culmination; a fitting denouement to a thrilling absorbing and captivating historical crime fiction novel.
This is an author with her finger on the pulse of 400-year-old espionage, torture and violent criminality. Her worked is steeped in the facts of the time; and era that she has intimate historical knowledge of.
There’s an extensive glossary and an application of the historical setting at the end, but the author’s natural cadence may make these unnecessary for readers who enjoy an excellent yarn.
