The Bear Pit

Name: The Bear Pit
Rating: 4.5 (3336 reviews)

by S. G. MacLean Book 4 in the Damian Seeker series.

First published 2019

Amazon

4.5(3,336)

London, 1656. Royalists and disillusioned Parliamentarians are preparing an attempt on Oliver Cromwell’s life when Damian Seeker is called to a body apparently mauled by a bear. Bear-baiting has been outlawed and the animals supposedly destroyed, making the manner of death as troubling as the identity of the victim.

The investigation leads Seeker through coffee houses, workshops and the marshes beyond the settled city, where clockmakers, informers and political conspirators conceal overlapping plans. He must establish how the bear was used and whether the murder is part of the assassination plot before Cromwell’s enemies can strike.

Cromwell’s Protectorate relies heavily on intelligence because armed Royalist plots, religious radicals and dissatisfied former Parliamentarians remain active beneath outward stability. Seeker’s work shows the uneasy boundary between policing and political surveillance. The forbidden bear pit becomes an apt setting for a regime that has outlawed older entertainments while struggling to control the clandestine networks that survive beneath official reform.