THE LOST BOYS OF LONDON

A determined herbalist searches for a missing boy in Tudor London.

When a young boy is found hanging from one of the grotesques on the exterior of St. Mary Magdalen’s church, a local constable calls Bianca Goddard to help. Although Bianca’s a brewer and purveyor of mendicants and physics, she’s proven herself useful in solving past crimes (The Alchemist of Lost Souls, 2019, etc.). This death is particularly poignant: The “dangler,” who can’t be more than 10, has a rosary wrapped around his neck and looks, all things considered, surprisingly peaceful. With the help of a bead maker, Bianca’s discovery of the initials YHS on the back of the rosary makes her wonder whether the murderer is connected with the Catholic cult of the Holy Name. She throws herself into the mystery as a distraction from her own loneliness in the grime, filth, and rain of an unlovely London February. She’s recently lost a baby, and her husband, John Grunt, is in the north as an unwilling soldier in Henry’s war on Scotland. Now Bianca has only her cat, the street vendor Meddybemps, and a boy named Fisk for company. She plans to hire Fisk to help her with her plant collecting, but he goes missing, and rumors that he was part of a ring of young street thieves run by a displaced monk who held them against their will add to Bianca’s anxiety. So does rivalry among Catholic and Lutheran worshipers, constables of different wards, and priests of different churches as well as an extortion plot and a dangerous sweet-smelling rag. When a second boy of around Fisk’s age is also hanged, this time in St. Benet’s, Bianca fears that her young friend will be next.

Lawrence’s London is no fairy-tale setting, but her heroine is as plucky as they come.