Naming the Dead

Amsterdam, 1608. Physician Alexander Baxby has fled England with Separatist friends and hopes to build a new life beyond the reach of his former spymaster and Archbishop Richard Bancroft. When a young Englishman is found dead beneath the Blue Bridge, Baxby doubts that the fall was accidental; a second death and pamphlets accusing the victims of Spanish sympathies draw him into a murder investigation amid rumours that the Dutch Republic may agree a truce with Spain.

The novel places Baxby among the English religious exiles of Amsterdam, including historical figures Thomas Helwys, John Smyth, John Robinson and William Brewster, whose communities contributed to the later Baptist and Pilgrim traditions. Their identities, exile and religious disputes are historical, while Baxby, the victims and the central conspiracy are fictional. Haden also uses the commercial and political tensions of the Dutch Golden Age to show that relative religious toleration did not remove the risks faced by immigrants and dissenters.