MURDER IN GRUB STREET

More 18th-century adventure for blind magistrate Sir John Fielding. Here, the judge's sidekick, the 13-year-old orphaned Jeremy Proctor, has been apprenticed to a well-known printer in Grub Street, Ezekiel Crabb, but the night before Jeremy is to join the Crabb household, everyone in the family is brutally murdered- -everyone, that is, except a mysterious guest, a poet named John Clayton, who sits dazed in an attic room, covered in blood but unable to explain himself. Sir John holds firm in his intentions to investigate the sensational case, ignoring cries for the immediate trial and hanging of Clayton, who seems to all but Sir John the obvious killer. But how did one man manage to kill six people in barbarous fashion without rousing the entire household or the neighbors? The lack of other circumstantial evidence also makes Sir John suspicious of the seemingly neat solution presented by Clayton. Meanwhile, as Sir John and Jeremy delve deeper, they encounter a somewhat sinister Christian brotherhood that seems to have connections to other people involved in the case, despite their protestations of innocence. The judge may be blind, but as ever he has a keen ear for prevarication and falsehood, as well as an inquiring mind and relentless passion for getting at the truth. Sir John's second bout of detection (Blind Justice, 1994) is a nifty piece of Georgian work: an intriguing puzzle plus a lively, vivid portrait of everyday life in 1769 London.