SPOILER'S PREY

A battle between tradition and new ideas leads to unrest and murder in 1748 England as the movement to enclose farmland takes off.

A letter from his friend Dr. Luke Fidelis urges Titus Cragg, Lancashire’s county coroner, to come to the little town of Ingolside, which Fidelis fears has been the site of a murder. Fidelis is attending Mrs. Lumsden, mother of the local squire, whose determination to enclose land the villagers rely on for grazing and growing food will bring them to ruin. Cragg stays with a relative while he investigates—much to the squire’s disapproval—the case of a man found dead in the town marketplace. John Lavenham, a documents expert looking into land holdings, had arrived with surveyor Wilkin Tree as part of Lumsden’s plan to throw people off their land. When Fidelis examines the corpse, he finds damaged lungs, bruises, and a postmortem gunshot wound. Before he died, Lavenham escaped a fire that destroyed an inn where he was drinking, but there’s much confusion about how he was rescued and whether the fire was arson. Investigations lead Cragg to believe that Lavenham was forging documents that gave Lumsden the right to seize the land he wanted. After hearing testimony, an inquest delivers the verdict of accidental death from smoke inhalation, leaving many questions unanswered. A farmer forced off his land sells his wife for money to emigrate, and a boxing match held in town stirs up mixed emotions. Lumsden, meanwhile, uses every dirty trick to carry out his plan as Cragg and Fidelis search for the truth.

A minor mystery greatly enhanced by fascinating historical details.