Its my pleasure to stop and tell you about this historical read.
De-tangling the plot:
The City of London, 1678. New Year’s Day. Twelve years have passed since the Great Fire ripped through the City. Eighteen since the fall of Oliver Cromwell and the restoration of a King. London is gripped by hysteria, and rumours of Catholic plots and sinister foreign assassins abound.
When the body of a young boy drained of his blood is discovered on the snowy bank of the Fleet River, Robert Hooke, the Curator of Experiments at the just-formed Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge, and his assistant Harry Hunt, are called in to explain such a ghastly finding—and whether it's part of a plot against the king. They soon learn it is not the first bloodless boy to have been discovered.
Meanwhile, that same morning Henry Oldenburg, the Secretary of the Royal Society, blows his brains out, and a disgraced Earl is released from the Tower of London, bent on revenge against the King, Charles II.
Wary of the political hornet’s nest they are walking into – and using scientific evidence rather than paranoia in their pursuit of truth – Hooke and Hunt must discover why the boy was murdered, and why his blood was taken.
Bobs and Books honest review:
I was first attracted to this due it sounding so unusual. It really is unique and like nothing I've read before.
This really takes you into the underworld of London at that time and you feel completely immersed into that dark world. The descriptions are rich with detail- sometimes not for the fainthearted.
A wonderful blend of true historical characters and fictional in this and unusually this really works,
Dark, surprising and lots of tension throughout. This had a real gothic atmosphere. Wasn't what I was expecting in a thrilling way.
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 The Bloodless Boy. He lives in Crickhowell in the Brecon Beacons. This is his first book.
Out now.
