The King's Evil

Pudding Lane, London, September 1666.  A poorly tended fire in a bakery oven one night has taken the opportunity to grow.  And grow it did, for the closely packed wooden houses were good fuel to feed it.  London burned for four days.  In its aftermath, the city lay destroyed, burned to the ground.

Returning home from Oxford, Christopher Redmayne finds that his house and that of his brother, Henry have survived the conflagration.  Henry encourages Christopher to taken advantage of the tragedy.

Constable Jonathan Bale is doing his best to deter thieves taking advantage, too.  Thieve proliferated the city in search of goods that were now easily accessible.  Having met Redmayne on couple of occasions, Bale is not impressed by him.  Bale wants to maintain his honest position as a constable.  Redmayne has rubbed him the wrong way from the get go.

However, the two men find themselves working together when Redmayne 's employer is brutally murdered in the house Redmayne had designed for him.  Redmayne is determined to find the murderer.  As Redmayne begins his quest, he discovers some surprising things about the victim.  Meantime, Bale has discovered that the victim was not well liked amongst his business rivals.  The question arises, did the house that Redmayne had designed have anything to do with the murder?

Not long after this, the victim's lawyer is murdered.  Things point to a ship owned by the victim, and connections in France.  What dangers are Redmayne and Bale getting themselves into as their investigation progresses?

Author Edward Marston provides plenty of intrigue, tension and danger in the concluding pages of this historical murder mystery.  A very good read.