A Dark Anatomy

by Robin Blake

Published 4 March 2011

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, Garlick Hall, her throat brutally slashed.

Called to...

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Dark Waters

by Robin Blake

Published 7 June 2012

Preston, 1741.

The drowning of drunken publican Antony Egan is no surprise - even if it comes as an unpleasant shock to coroner Titus Cragg, whose wife was the old man's niece. But he does his duty to the letter, and the inquest's verdict is accidental death. Meanwhile...

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Skin and Bone

by Robin Blake

Published 4 February 2016
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...Read more

The Scrivener

by Robin Blake

Published 5 March 2015
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...Read more