Restoration London, shortly after the great fire of 1666. An impressive rebuilding effort is underway by the inhabitants, which leads to disputes in the Fire Court, a hastily convened legal entity, set up to iron out squabbles between tenants and landlords over who has the right to build and who bears the cost. There is money to be made, and unscrupulous deals are under way. James Marwood, now a man on the rise, is drawn in when his confused father relates a garbled tale of murder, before himself dying in strange circumstances.
A sequel to The Ashes of London, we are once again in the gently smoking city, now a charred ruins and Andrew Taylor is good at conjuring up the sense of destruction, loss and warring bureaucracy which hampers the people. The setting is atmospheric and characters convincing. Marwood meets the enigmatic Catherine Lovett again, who is hiding from her enemies as Jane Hakesby, a maid to the master of a drawing office. A woman who clearly fascinates and alarms him (one who carries a knife under her skirts) they unwillingly join forces to resolve the skulduggery that surrounds them, Marwood as a government agent, and Lovett to protect her future and secret identity.
As events play out, Marwood sinks deeper into trouble, and by the end of the narrative, is not at all the man he was. We wait to see whether he will rise again in a third ‘fire’ book.
