Paying in Blood

by Karen Haden Book 1 in the Alexander Baxby Mysteries series.

First published 2024

Amazon

3.8(36)

In 1600 ambitious Alexander Baxby is sent with an English force fighting the Spanish in the Low Countries, where he is unexpectedly pressed into helping an overworked surgeon and amputates the injured foot of soldier John Crackleton. Back in Lincoln, Baxby begins training as a physician and keeps a promise to investigate the suspicious death of Crackleton’s wife, only to find that neighbours are frightened to speak and that a seditious tract at a murder scene points towards a much wider political and religious struggle.

The mystery carries Baxby through the last years of Elizabeth I’s reign, the Essex Rebellion and the carefully managed succession of James VI & I, exposing the importance of patronage, printed propaganda and Church surveillance. Elizabeth I, James, Robert Cecil, Robert Devereux and Richard Bancroft appear within the historical setting, while Baxby, his patron Geoffrey and the Crackleton murder investigation are fictional. Haden uses documented religious conflict and court rivalry as the framework for a crime and espionage thriller.

Historical Periods

Essex Rebellion1601 CE Succession of James VI & I1602–1603 Battle of Nieuwpoort2 July 1600

Genres

Court & Political Fiction Crime & Mystery Espionage Historical Thriller

Historical people

Elizabeth I1533–1603 Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex1565–1601 Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury1563–1612 James VI and I1566–1625 Richard Bancroft1544–1610