The Printer’s Coffin

by M. J. Carter Book 2 in the Blake and Avery series.

First published 2015

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4.1(886)

London, November 1841. Jeremiah Blake is working as a private inquiry agent while Captain William Avery, recently returned from Afghanistan, is struggling with the restrictions of country life. Viscount Allington asks them to investigate the murders of two printers whose presses produced pornography, freethought and radical political material. The new Metropolitan Police show little interest, but connections with Chartist politics suggest that the killings may protect interests far beyond the printing district.

The inquiry carries Blake and Avery through rookeries, brothels, missions, coffee houses and political circles where arguments over universal male suffrage, press freedom, factory labour and poverty are becoming increasingly difficult to contain. Historical figures including Richard Carlile and Henry Mayhew appear within the fictional investigation, while memories of Peterloo shape older radicals’ distrust of authority. The murders force Blake and Avery to ask who benefits when controversial voices are silenced and respectable reform becomes entangled with coercion.