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The plague raging through London in 1665 has emptied the city. The only people left are those too poor to flee or those who selflessly struggle to control the contagion and safeguard the capital's future. Amongst them, though, are those prepared to risk their health for money - those who sell dubious 'cures' and hawk food at wildly inflated prices. Also amongst them are those who hold in their hands the future of the city's most iconic building - St Paul's Cathedral.
Oxford, Spring 1353. When young bookseller Nicholas Elyot discovers the body of student William Farringdon floating in the river Cherwell, it looks like a drowning. Soon, however, Nicholas finds evidence of murder. Who could have wanted to kill this promising student? As Nicholas and his scholar friend Jordain try to unravel what lies behind William's death, they learn that he was innocently caught up in a criminal plot.
Matthew Bartholomew, unorthodox but effective physician to Michaelhouse college in medieval Cambridge, is as worried as anyone about the pestilence that is ravaging Europe and seems to be approaching England. But he is distracted by the sudden and inexplicable death of the Master of Michaelhouse - a death the University authorities do not want investigated.
Paul Doherty's most popular series character returns. Hugh Corbett is about to take up a life of danger once again in the 19th novel in his series and the follow-up to Dark Serpent. If you love historical mysteries from Robin Hobb, Susanna Gregory, Michael Jecks, Peter Tremayne and Bernard Knight, you will love this.
It's 1811, and the threat of revolution haunts the upper classes of King George III's England. Then a beautiful young woman is found savagely murdered on the altar steps of an ancient church near Westminster Abbey. A dueling pistol found at the scene and the damning testimony of a witness both point to one man - Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, a brilliant young nobleman shattered by his experience in the Napoleonic Wars.
The year is 1143, and King Owain seeks to unite his daughter in marriage with an allied king. But when the groom is murdered on the way to his wedding, the bride's brother tasks his two best detectives - Gareth, a knight, and Gwen, the daughter of the court bard - with bringing the killer to justice.
The plague raging through London in 1665 has emptied the city. The only people left are those too poor to flee or those who selflessly struggle to control the contagion and safeguard the capital's future. Amongst them, though, are those prepared to risk their health for money - those who sell dubious 'cures' and hawk food at wildly inflated prices. Also amongst them are those who hold in their hands the future of the city's most iconic building - St Paul's Cathedral.
Oxford, Spring 1353. When young bookseller Nicholas Elyot discovers the body of student William Farringdon floating in the river Cherwell, it looks like a drowning. Soon, however, Nicholas finds evidence of murder. Who could have wanted to kill this promising student? As Nicholas and his scholar friend Jordain try to unravel what lies behind William's death, they learn that he was innocently caught up in a criminal plot.
Matthew Bartholomew, unorthodox but effective physician to Michaelhouse college in medieval Cambridge, is as worried as anyone about the pestilence that is ravaging Europe and seems to be approaching England. But he is distracted by the sudden and inexplicable death of the Master of Michaelhouse - a death the University authorities do not want investigated.
Paul Doherty's most popular series character returns. Hugh Corbett is about to take up a life of danger once again in the 19th novel in his series and the follow-up to Dark Serpent. If you love historical mysteries from Robin Hobb, Susanna Gregory, Michael Jecks, Peter Tremayne and Bernard Knight, you will love this.
It's 1811, and the threat of revolution haunts the upper classes of King George III's England. Then a beautiful young woman is found savagely murdered on the altar steps of an ancient church near Westminster Abbey. A dueling pistol found at the scene and the damning testimony of a witness both point to one man - Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, a brilliant young nobleman shattered by his experience in the Napoleonic Wars.
The year is 1143, and King Owain seeks to unite his daughter in marriage with an allied king. But when the groom is murdered on the way to his wedding, the bride's brother tasks his two best detectives - Gareth, a knight, and Gwen, the daughter of the court bard - with bringing the killer to justice.
The murder of a man on London Bridge is the first indication that the Earl of Clarendon's fears of a rebellion may be well-founded. His spy, Thomas Chaloner, suspects the assassin may be a member of a group dedicated to seeing the return of Puritanism, and at the same time he learns of a faction determined to bring back the Catholic Church. As he moves unobtrusively between White Hall, the Strand and the heaving congestion on the Bridge, he becomes aware of an undercurrent of restlessness in the capital.
And it soon becomes clear that the groups he is investigating are planning some extraordinary climax to achieve their separate aims on Shrove Tuesday, which gives him very little time to thwart their intentions…
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
Better narrator.
What was most disappointing about Susanna Gregory’s story?
The narration.
How did the narrator detract from the book?
By not giving the right emphasis on paragraphs
What character would you cut from A Murder on London Bridge?
There were far too many characters and a number could have been cut.
Any additional comments?
I loved the idea of the old London Bridge with the houses on it being the site of a murder..... and I was looking forward to much more historical detail and was very disappointed. I did not get a feel for the characters and did not really care what happened and gave up towards the end.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
Unlike Susanna Gregory's other series staring Matthew Bartholomew, the Thomas Chaloner 's books took me a while to get into as the main character is not an easy person to like, tending to be taciturn, remote and aloof, but, after all, Chaloner is a spy not a monk and a physician as in Gregory's other series.
The narration is good, with Gordon Griffin successfully managing an array of different accents and both female and male voices. The plot is solid, with good historic details and enough atmosphere for you to picture the scenes, smell the - often noxious - odours and understand that we are reading about a time that although is not that dissimilar from our own, is nevertheless different.
Not a five star review though as the plot is not one of the best in this long series but certainly worth a listen if you are working your way through all the books and it has stood up to repeated listens.