Thomas Chaloner Books

Susanna Gregory, author of the Matthew Bartholomew series of medieval mysteries, has created another compelling fictional detective set in Restoration London. -------------------------------------------- The first adventure in the Thomas Chaloner series. The dour days of Cromwell are over. Charles II is well established at White Hall Palace, his mistress at hand in rooms over the Holbein bridge, the heads of some of the regicides on public display. London seethes with new energy, freed from the strictures of the Protectorate, but many of its inhabitants have lost their livelihoods. One is Thomas Chaloner, a reluctant spy for the feared Secretary of State, John Thurloe, and now returned from Holland in desperate need of employment. His erstwhile boss, knowing he has many enemies at court, recommends Thomas to Lord Clarendon, but in return demands that Thomas keep him informed of any plot against him. But what Thomas discovers is that Thurloe had sent another ex-employee to White Hall and he is dead, supposedly murdered by footpads near the Thames. Chaloner volunteers to investigate his killing: instead he is dispatched to the Tower to unearth the gold buried by the last Governor. He discovers not treasure, but evidence that greed and self-interest are uppermost in men's minds whoever is in power, and that his life has no value to either side. 'Pungent with historical detail' ( Irish Times) 'A richly imagined world of colourful medieval society and irresistible monkish sleuthing' ( Good Book Guide ) 'Corpses a-plenty, exciting action sequences and a satisfying ending' ( Mystery People )

In London in 1663, rebellion is in the air. Thomas Chaloner, spy for the King's intelligence service, has just returned from thwarting a planned revolt in Dublin, but he soon realizes that England's capital is no haven of peace. Ordered to investigate the shooting of a beggar during a royal procession, he soon learns that the man is not a vagrant, but someone with links to the powerful Company of Barber-Surgeons. Meanwhile, Chaloner's master, the Earl of Clarendon, is locked in a deadly feud with the Earl of Bristol, and an innocent man is about to be hanged in Newgate. In a desperate race against time, Chaloner must find a way to protect Clarendon, track down a murderer, and save an innocent man from the executioner's noose.

Thomas Chaloner, just returned from a clandestine excursion to Spain and Portugal on behalf of the Queen, finds London dank and grey under leaden skies. Although he has only been away for a short while, he finds many things changed, including the government slapping a tax on printed newspapers. Handwritten news reports escape the duty, and the rivalry between the producers of the two conduits of news is the talk of the coffeehouses, with the battle to be first with any sort of intelligence escalating into violent rivalry. And it seems that a number of citizens who have eaten cucumbers have come to untimely deaths. It is such a death which Chaloner is despatched to investigate; that of a lawyer with links to "the Butcher of Smithfield," a shady trader surrounded by a fearsome gang of thugs who terrorize the streets well beyond the confines of Smithfield market. Chaloner doesn't believe that either this death or the others are caused by a simple vegetable, but to prove his theory he has to untangle the devious means of how news is gathered and he has to put his personal safety aside as he tries to penetrate the rumor mill surrounding the Butcher of Smithfield and discover his real identity.

After the Puritan ban on Christmas festivities, Restoration London is awash with excess between Christmas Eve and Twelfth Night, but the two men found in Westminster Hall had not died from a surfeit of gluttony, but from poison. The Lord Chancellor appoints Chaloner as his investigator into the killings, believing them to be of scant importance to the affairs of state he deals with. But Chaloner reveals a stinking seam of corruption in the Palace of White Hall, where even the Queen is a victim to the greed of courtiers and functionaries. And the pickings are so rich that men are prepared to go to any lengths to save their own skins and their stolen fortunes.

The murder of a man in broad daylight on London Bridge is the first indication that the Earl of Clarendon's fears of a rebellion against the newly restored monarchy 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 close to the King determined to bring back the old ways of the Roman Catholic Church. He discovers, too, that the killing on the Bridge is not the only assault committed there recently, and begins to decipher a link between the violence and the people who manage the Bridge and its tottering, ramshackle buildings. As he moves unobtrusively between White Hall, the elegant mansions along the Strand, and the heaving congestion on the only river crossing 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 identify the ring-leaders and thwart their intentions.

London swelters in a heatwave in the summer of 1664, and in the corridors of power the temperature is equally high as an outbreak of war with the Dutch threatens to become a reality, in the sixth Chaloner mystery In the dilapidated surroundings of the Savoy, a delegation from the government in the Netherlands is gathered in a last ditch attempt to secure peace between the two countries. Thomas Chaloner, active in Holland during Cromwell's time, is horrified at the violent aggression and hatred shown to the Dutch by ordinary Londoners, but is more worried by the dismissive attitude with which they are greeted by the King's ministers and officials—he has experienced the futilities of war at first hand and has no wish to witness another. When the body of his former brother-in-law is found in the Thames, Chaloner discovers the dead man has left enigmatic clues to a motivation for his murder. These clues may be linked to a plot to steal the crown jewels, or to a conspiracy to ensure that no peace is secured between the two nations. Whichever it proves to be, Chaloner knows he has very little time to decipher the pointers left to him.

The seventh Thomas Chaloner adventure in Restoration London Thomas Chaloner is relieved to be summoned back to London. His master, the Earl of Clarendon, has sent him to Tangier to investigate a case of corruption. Chaloner will be glad to be home and reunited with his new wife, but the trivial reason for his recall exasperates him—the theft of material from the construction site of Clarendon's embarrassingly sumptuous new house just north of Piccadilly. Within hours of his return, Chaloner considers these thefts even more paltry as he is thrust into extra investigations involving threats of assassination, a stolen corpse, and a scheme to frame the Queen for treason. Yet there are connections from them all which thread through the unfinished Clarendon House.

Superspy of Restoration London, Thomas Chaloner foils an uprising in his eighth outing. Five years after Charles II's triumphant return to London there is growing mistrust of his extravagant court and of corruption among his officials—and when a cart laden with gunpowder explodes outside the General Letter Office, it is immediately clear that such an act is more than an expression of outrage at the inefficiency of the postal service. As intelligencer to the Lord Chamberlain, Thomas Chaloner cannot understand why a man of known incompetence is put in charge of investigating the attack while he is diverted to make enquiries about the poisoning of birds in the King's aviary in St James's Park. He becomes even more suspicious of his employer's motives when he discovers that the witnesses he needs to interview have close links to the business conducted in the General Letter Office, activities more firmly centered on intercepting people's mail than delivering it. Then human rather than avian victims are poisoned, and Chaloner knows he has to ignore his master's instructions and use his own considerable wits to defeat an enemy whose deadly tentacles reach into the very heart of the government—an enemy who has the power and expertise to destroy anyone who stands in the way.

While investigating the murder of Paul Ferine, who served the king as groom of the robes, intelligencer Thomas Chaloner finds himself tasked with tracking down the leaders of the Fifth Monarchists, a fanatical sect.

Another excellent historical adventure from Susanna Gregory, featuring 17th-century spy Thomas Chaloner London in the spring of 1665 is a city full of fear. There is plague in the streets of St. Giles, the Dutch fleet is preparing to invade, and a banking crisis threatens to leave Charles II's government with no means of paying for the nation's defense. Amid the tension, Thomas Chaloner is ordered to investigate the murder of Dick Wheler, one of the few goldsmith-bankers to have survived the losses that have driven others to bankruptcy—or worse. At the same time, a French spy staggers across the city, carrying the plague from one parish to another. Chaloner's foray into the world of the financiers who live in and around Cheapside quickly convinces him that they are just as great a threat as the Dutch, but their power and greed thwarts him at every turn. Meanwhile, the plague continues to spread across the city, and the body count from the disease and from the fever of avarice starts to rise alarmingly.

In the sapping summer heat of 1665 there is little celebration in London of the naval victory at the Battle of Lowestoft. The King, his retinue and anyone with sufficient means has fled the plague-ridden city, its half-deserted streets echoing to the sound of bells tolling the mounting number of deaths. Those who remain clutch doubtful potions to ward off the relentless disease and dart nervously past shuttered buildings, watchful for the thieves who risk their lives to plunder what has been left behind. At Chelsea, a rural backwater by the river, with fine mansions leased to minor members of the Court avoiding the capital, there are more immediate concerns: the government has commandeered the theological college to house Dutch prisoners of war and there are daily rumours that those sailors are on the brink of escaping. Moreover, a vicious strangler is stalking the neighbourhood. Thomas Chaloner is sent to investigate the murder of the first victim, an inmate of a private sanatorium known as Gorges. There have been thefts there as well, but the few facts he gleans from inmates and staff are contradictory and elusive. He realises, though, that Gorges has stronger links to the prison than just proximity, and that the influx of strangers offers plenty of camouflage for a killer - a killer who has no compunction about turning on those determined to stop his murderous rampage.

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. The handsome edifice is crumbling from decades of neglect and indecision, giving the current custodians a stark choice - repair or demolish. Both sides have fanatical adherents who have been fighting each other since the Civil Wars. Large sums of money have disappeared, major players have mysteriously vanished, and then a unidentified skeleton is discovered in another man's grave. A reluctant Chaloner returns to London to investigate, only to discover that someone is determined to thwart him by any means - by bullet, poison or bludgeon - and he fears he has very little time to identify the culprits before he becomes yet another victim in the battle for the Cathedral's future.

By January 1666, the plague has almost disappeared from London, leaving its surviving population diminished and in poverty. The resentment against those who had fled to the country turns to outrage as the court and its followers return, their licentiousness undiminished. The death of a well-connected physician, the mysterious sinking of a man-of-war in the Thames and the disappearance of a popular courtier are causing concern to Thomas Chaloner's employer. When instructed to investigate them all, he is irritated that he is prevented from gaining intelligence on the military preparations of the Dutch. Then he discovers common threads in all the cases, which seem linked to those planning to set a match to the powder keg of rebellion in the city. Battling a ferocious winter storm that causes serious damage to London's fabric, Chaloner is in a race against time to prevent the weakened city from utter destruction.

In the spring of 1666 everyone's first reaction to a sudden death at the palace of White Hall is that the plague has struck, but the killing of Thomas Chiffinch was by design, not disease. Chiffinch was holder of two influential posts - Keeper of the Closet and Keeper of the Jewels - and rival courtiers have made no secret of their wish to succeed to those offices. To Thomas Chaloner, ordered to undertake the investigation, such avarice gives a whole host of suspects an ample motive for murder. The same courtiers are at the heart of the royal entourage endorsing the King's licentious and ribald way of life, and Chaloner has some sympathy with the atmosphere of outrage and disgust at such behaviour. London's citizens, already irked by the wealthy fleeing to the country at the outbreak of the plague, have scant patience with the Court on its return. The city is abuzz with rumours of dissent and rebellion, fuelled by predictions from a soothsayer in Clerkenwell of a rain of fire destroying the capital on Good Friday. Chaloner initially dismisses such talk as nonsense, but as he uncovers ever more connections to Clerkenwell among his suspects, he begins to fear that there is also design behind the rumours - and that, come Easter Day, the King and his Court might find themselves the focus of yet another rebellion.

The people and businesses of London are quickly recovering from the ravages of the plague, none faster than the Court of Charles II where excess, corruption and debauchery has rebounded at a frenetic pace. In Westminster, in the haphazard corridors of White Hall Palace, plans are afoot for a grandiose ball in honour of a long-dead but English-born Pope. Meanwhile, the markets and coffee houses in the city are awash with rumours of war and portents of a coming disaster, inflamed by uncensored newssheets and the wagging tongues of dissatisfied citizens. Mysterious killings at both ends of the capital have been caused by the use of an unusually long, slender blade, and Thomas Chaloner is ordered to investigate. The only common thread is the victims' connection to the Worshipful Company of Poulters, whose members are struggling to keep ahead of London's enormous demand for eggs. But this leads him into a tapestry of conspiracy, outlandish claims of the Second Coming, the reappearance of a number of regicides and ever more brazen killings. As the date of the great ball looms closer, Chaloner fears that there is a dangerously credible conspiracy against the throne, and he has very little time to prevent history from repeating itself . . .