1. Death in the Dark Walk
Fresh from completing his apprenticeship, apothecary John Rawlings celebrates at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens only to stumble over the body of a murdered young woman. Taken before the Bow Street magistrate John Fielding as a possible suspect, Rawlings clears himself and so impresses the celebrated blind justice…
2. Death at the Beggar’s Opera
At a fashionable performance of The Beggar’s Opera in Drury Lane, John Rawlings watches the leading actor Jasper Harcross collapse and die before the audience. Harcross is notorious for his affairs, and the theatrical company supplies no shortage of rivals, lovers and enemies when Rawlings joins…
3. Death at the Devil’s Tavern
A corpse recovered from the Thames is identified by John Rawlings as Sir William Hartfield, the bridegroom who failed to appear at his wedding earlier that day. What might have been dismissed as drowning soon becomes a murder enquiry, and Sir John Fielding asks Rawlings to…
4. Death on the Romney Marsh
On Romney Marsh, John Rawlings becomes involved in a death whose significance reaches far beyond a local murder. Sir John Fielding identifies the victim as a French spymaster, sending Rawlings back into the isolated communities of the marsh to discover who has been passing information and…
5. Death in the Peerless Pool
When a woman found dead near the Peerless Pool is identified as Hannah Rankin, an assistant at St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics, Sir John Fielding assigns John Rawlings to the case. Rawlings’s enquiries inside the institution uncover traces of a hidden past and connect Hannah’s death…
6. Death at the Apothecaries’ Hall
A livery dinner at Apothecaries’ Hall ends in disaster when an outbreak of poisoning kills one of the Society’s members. Because John Rawlings belongs to the profession himself, Sir John Fielding places him in an unusually sensitive position: he can question fellow apothecaries and understand the…
7. Death in the West Wind
In April 1759, John Rawlings and his new wife travel to Devon for their honeymoon, but the discovery of Juliana van Guylder’s battered body aboard an apparently deserted ship brings the holiday to an abrupt end. Her brother then disappears, leaving Rawlings with an assortment of…
8. Death in St James’s Palace
London, 1761. Sir John Fielding is summoned to St James’s Palace to receive a knighthood at a court newly focused on Queen Charlotte, and John Rawlings accompanies him when Fielding’s wife is unable to attend. The ceremony is disrupted when the nobleman George Goward plunges down…
9. Death in the Valley of Shadows
A terrified wine importer named Aidan Fenchurch takes refuge in John Rawlings’s Piccadilly shop, claiming that his former mistress Ariadne Bussell has pursued him obsessively since he ended their affair. He entrusts Rawlings with sealed papers describing her conduct, then is bludgeoned to death outside his…
10. Death in the Setting Sun
John Rawlings has built a prosperous apothecary business and a contented family life when his wife Emilia is invited by an old school friend to perform before the royal circle at Gunnersbury House. Rawlings follows her there during the Christmas season, expecting an evening of entertainment,…
11. Death and the Cornish Fiddler
In the spring of 1767, the widowed John Rawlings takes his daughter Rose and his former lover Elizabeth di Lorenzi to Cornwall for the Helstone Floral Dance. Their journey is interrupted when a child disappears from an inn, and the mystery deepens after a courtesan staying…
12. Death in Hellfire
July 1767. John Rawlings adopts an aristocratic identity and a dubious Irish accent in order to infiltrate the circle associated with Sir Francis Dashwood and the notorious gatherings at Medmenham Abbey. What begins as an investigation of scandal among the elite becomes a murder case when…
13. Death and the Black Pyramid
Leaving Rose with her grandfather, John Rawlings takes the stagecoach towards Exeter. His fellow passengers include a talkative German woman, a dance master and the formidable bare-knuckle fighter Jack Beef, known as the Black Pyramid. Their journey is interrupted at the Half Moon Inn when a…
14. Death at the Wedding Feast
John Rawlings travels to Devon to be with Elizabeth di Lorenzi as she prepares to give birth to their child. At Sidmouth House he discovers another family event approaching: Lady Sidmouth’s young daughter Miranda is to marry the much older Earl of St Austell, a man…
15. Death on the Rocks
John Rawlings is asked to investigate a man claiming to be the long-lost stepson of a wealthy Bristol merchant and therefore heir to a valuable diamond inheritance. He travels west with his father, Sir Gabriel Kent, who intends to take the waters at Hotwell, and together…
16. Death at the Boston Tea Party
John Rawlings reaches Boston after a difficult Atlantic journey and finds a colonial city divided by arguments over taxation and British rule. His plans for a carbonated-water venture bring him into medical practice, where one of his patients is the patriot physician Joseph Warren, through whom…
17. Death on the River Thames
After profiting from his carbonated-water business, John Rawlings buys a house at Strand-on-the-Green in Chiswick and expects a quieter life beside the Thames. That hope ends when he witnesses the rescue of a small child from the river and hears her insist that she was deliberately…