I was delighted to be asked to join the blog tour for ‘The Poison Machine’ – the second historical thriller featuring Hunt and Hooke. This book follows on from last year’s excellent ‘The Bloodless Boy’, although can be read as a standalone.
Thanks to Nikki at Melville House Press for my spot on the tour and the copy of the book for review. As always, opinions are entirely my own.
From the Publisher:
In this thrilling latest installment in the Hunt & Hooke series, Harry Hunt must go to Paris in search of a spy and imposter who has knowledge of a plot to kill the Queen of England…
1679. Harry Hunt—estranged from his mentor Robert Hooke—meets Sir Jonas Moore, the King’s Surveyor-General of the Board of Ordnance, in the remote and windswept marshes of Norfolk. There, workers draining the fenland have uncovered a skeleton.
Accompanied by his friend Colonel Fields, an old soldier for Parliament, and Hooke’s niece, Grace, Harry confirms Sir Jonas’s suspicion: the body is that of a dwarf, Captain Jeffrey Hudson, once famously given to Queen Henrietta Maria in a pie.
During the Civil Wars, Hudson accompanied the Queen to France to sell the Royal Jewels to fund her husband’s army. He was sent home in disgrace after shooting a man in a duel. But nobody knew Hudson was dead. Another man, working as a spy, has lived as him since his murder. Now, this impostor has disappeared, taking vital information with him, along with the whereabouts of a stolen diamond. Sir Jonas orders Harry to find him.
Harry’s search takes him to Paris, another city bedeviled by conspiracies and intrigues. He navigates its salons and libraries, and learns of a terrible plot against the current Queen of England, Catherine of Bragança, and her gathering of Catholics in London.
Assassins plan to poison them all… But where? When?
‘An intriguing confection of history and fiction, clearly based on an impressive quantity of research. The novel cleverly
Andrew Taylor, author of ‘The Ashes of London’
combines murder investigation and political intrigue with the pioneering scientific work of Robert Hooke and his colleagues at
the Royal Society. Bravo!’
‘Hugely entertaining… the mystery romps along.’
The Times
‘This is a 17th-century Mission Impossible and a real page-turner.’
Historical Novels Review
My Review:
It was no secret that I loved last year’s ‘The Bloodless Boy’, the first in the Hunt and Hooke series – you can read my review here.
This second instalment is every bit as meticulously-researched, tightly-plotted and intriguing as the first! It can, however, also be read as a standalone if you understand only that Robert Hooke (scientist, big deal at the Royal Society, professor at Gresham College) is mentor to the young Harry Hunt.
This book opens with a splitting of Hooke and Hunt after an upset at the Royal Society. Harry Hunt, our main focus for this novel, decides to go his own way and take on a lucrative job offer from the Board of Ordnance. He’s tasked with identifying a body found in the Norfolk Marshes – and then the living man who is pretending to be him. Meanwhile, a plot is gathering momentum against the Queen of England, and Harry – drawn to Paris as part of his assignment – finds himself in a race against time to stop the crime.
Harry Hunt makes a compelling hero in this book – he’s headstrong and impulsive, but also naive in some ways and quite charmingly clueless in his dealings with the opposite sex. His ongoing kind-of relationship with Grace Hooke, Robert’s niece, is both sweet and frustrating in equal measure as Harry bumbles his way through! I did find myself rooting for him, especially as he took on a kind of action-hero role in a daring escape and a race to the finish.
As always, the historical detail is rich and authentic – both London and Paris are beautifully evoked in all their opulence and seediness (as Harry doesn’t limit his dealings to high society!) We are shown executions, scheming politicians, the grimness of the docks, religious conflict, academics and assassins. There’s crossing and double-crossing, traitors and heretics…plus a glimpse at some real life Restoration celebrities! All human life is here!
The story mainly follows Harry as he travels from London to Norfolk and then on to France – I found the narrative easy to follow, even as I was caught up in the historical detail and frantically googling the characters to see who was real (Titus Oates! Christopher Wren! Lieutenant-General La Reynie! Hortense Mancini!) The sheer number of characters referred to is a bit mind-boggling, but it’s really well done. As the plot gathered pace, I couldn’t put the book down.
This isn’t a period of history that I know very well, so there were a few points where I had to figure out what was happening in terms of the Civil War references, the religious wrangling and the monarchy. However, this is all good – a cracking historical thriller AND I learnt stuff along the way!
I’d recommend this to anyone who enjoys vivid and engaging historical fiction. It is packed with action, quirky characters, historical realism – and a relentless pace that will not let you out of its grip until the very end.
About the Author:
Robert J. Lloyd grew up in South London, Innsbruck, and Kinshasa (his parents worked in the British Foreign Service), and then in Sheffield, where he studied for a Fine Art degree, starting as a landscape painter but moving to film, performance, and installation. His MA thesis on Robert Hooke and the ‘New Philosophy’, inspired the ideas and characters in Hunt & Hook series. He lives in Crickhowell in Bannau Brycheiniog. The Poison Machine is his second book, following on from ‘The Bloodless Boy’.
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