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Preston, 1741. The drowning of drunken publican Antony Egan is no surprise even if it comes as unpleasant shock to coroner Titus Cragg, whose wife is the old man s niece. But he does his duty to the letter, and the inquest s verdict is accidental death. But Cragg s close friend Luke Fidelis finds evidence to cast doubt on the events leading up to Egan s demise. Soon, suspicions are roused still further when a well-to-do farmer collapses and it appears he was in town on political business. Is there a conspiracy afoot? With the help of Fidelis s scientific ingenuity he sets about bringing the true criminals to light

1743, and the tanners of Preston are a pariah community, plying their unwholesome trade beside a stretch of riverside marsh where many Prestonians by ancient right graze their livestock. When the body of a newborn child is found in one of their tanning pits, Cragg's enquiry falls foul of a cabal of merchants, dead set on modernising the town's economy and regarding the despised tanners - and Cragg's apparent championship of them - as obstacles to their plan. The murder of a baby is just the evidence they need to get rid of the tanners once and for all. But the inquest into the baby's death is disrupted when the inn in which it is being held mysteriously burns down. Then Cragg himself faces a charge of lewdness, jeopardising his whole future as a coroner. But the fates have not finished playing with him just yet. The sudden and suspicious death of a very prominent person may just, with the help of Fidelis's sharp forensic skills, bring about Cragg's redemption...

The year is 1740. George II is on the throne, but England s remoter provinces remain largely a law unto themselves. In Lancashire a grim discovery has been made: a squire s wife, Dolores Brockletower, lies in the woods above her home at Garlick Hall, her throat brutally slashed.Called to the scene, Coroner Titus Cragg finds the Brockletower household awash with rumour and suspicion. He enlists the help of his astute young friend, doctor Luke Fidelis, to throw light on the case. But this is a world in which forensic science is in its infancy, and policing hardly exists. Embarking on their first gripping investigation, Cragg and Fidelis are faced with the superstition of witnesses, obstruction by local officials and denunciations from the squire himself. A Dark Anatomy marks the arrival of a remarkable new voice in mystery and a pair of detectives both cunning and complex.

The year is 1742, and the people of Preston are looking forward to their ancient once-every-twenty-years festival of merriment and excess, the Preston Guild. But the prospect darkens as the town plunges into a financial crisis caused by the death of pawnbroker and would-be banker Philip Pimbo, apparently shot behind the locked door of his office. Is it suicide? Coroner Titus Cragg suspects so, but Dr Luke Fidelis disagrees. To untangle the truth Cragg must dig out the secrets of Pimbo's personal life, learn the grim facts of the African slave trade, search for a missing Civil War treasure and deal with the machinations of his old enemy Ephraim Grimshaw, now the town's mayor. Outwardly mild-mannered as ever, but passionate for justice, Cragg relies once again on the help and advice of his analytical friend Fidelis, his astute wife Elizabeth and the contents of a well-stocked library.As in his previous Cragg and Fidelis stories, Robin Blake brings a vivid cast of characters to the page in this third historical mystery about the dramas that pulse below the surface of life in a provincial Georgian town. Praise for Robin Blake:This is rollicking stuff. Financial TimesAn impressive whodunit. Publishers WeeklyFascinating . . . Blake's knowledge of an eighteenth century backwater just shaking off medieval superstitions is deep and engaging. Booklist (starred review)