The Poison Machine (A Hunt and Hooke Novel): 2

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However, there is a problem as someone else has been calling himself “Jeffrey Hudson” for a number of years. This man is presumed to be a French spy, who has now returned to France. This is my favourite period of history. I love murder mysteries set in Restoration London. This one can be read as a stand alone although I would definitely recommend reading The Bloodless Boy too. Like with the his previous book, it was the descriptive and sublime prose. With Harry we go from the bustling city of London, to the damp and silent Norfolk Fens and to the glamour and beauty of Paris. Robert J Lloyd’s wonderful writing is a feast of the senses, the sights, smells and sounds drew me in, and I felt I was there with the characters, seeing what they saw, and feeling what they felt, the good and the bad. There is so much historical detail in The Poison Machine, and I love that Robert J Lloyd uses colloquial language which helps anchor the plot in the seventeenth century: the addition of French phrases also tested my A level French.

Harry Hunt must go to Paris in search of a spy and imposter who has knowledge of a plot to kill the Queen of England in this thrilling and addictive sequel to The Bloodless Boy. With its detailed historical setting, intricate plotting, and developing characters, The Poison Machine is a worthy successor that is sure to delight fans of The Bloodless Boy, and establishes Lloyd’s Hunt & Hooke series as a must-read for all historical fiction aficionados. Anyone who enjoyed Frances Quinn’s The Smallest Man will also find The Poison Machine‘s take on the life and times of Jeffrey Hudson extremely interesting. Harry Hunt is just a little bit naive in this one, walking himself right into danger. You do not know who to trust or believe and we rush at a pace through a twisting complex plot.On to the book itself...it was a decent read. Robert Hooke plays a very small part in this story, and I felt the story suffered as a result. Harry Hunt on his own is just not as interesting to me as Hooke, so I really missed the byplay between the 2 characters. They offset each other nicely in the first book, and I was sad to have Hooke's character a mere 1/4th of the story in this sequel.

Harry is on the trail of dark deeds once more, and his findings lead him and Colonel Fields to the dangerous environs of Paris, where they uncover a dastardly plot to kill the current Queen of England, Catherine of Bragança, and everyone attending her upcoming gathering of Catholics in London. Can Harry foil another complex assassination attempt - this time one that involves deadly poison? As with his previous delve into the seventeen century, the author gives us many descriptive passages and much graphic detail. As the layers of the story unfold, Harry finds himself being used as a pawn in a dangerous diplomatic game and is dogged by deceit, conspiracy andThe man in the hat waved Boilot to go ahead. Breathing hard, Boilot reached the last stair, and found himself on the quayside. He saw no one. He jogged between two sheds, where the shadows were deepest, keeping his footsteps light. The smell of fat from meat brought in by a Greenland whaler—the boiling performed that day on the quayside—nearly overpowered him. The hunt for the impersonator takes Harry to Paris, full of conspiracies, intrigues, plots to kill the Queen and catholic members of the court. Anyone who enjoyed the first book or is a disciple of Tudor-Stuart fiction won’t be disappointed with this story. After a strong start, I got slightly bogged down but became totally engaged once Harry found himself in an almighty scrape in Paris. I award five well-deserved stars. Where the first book felt firmly grounded in typical mystery genre conventions, this leaned more towards thriller, which definitely impacted my enjoyment. For one, I don’t tend to enjoy thrillers in general, and for two, Lloyd once again showcased his knowledge of the era, which I loved in the first book, but here slowed the pace of what was trying to be big action sequences with plot twist after plot twist. I also struggled not seeing the interactions between Hunt and Hooke.

The protagonist, Harry Hunt, ex-apprentice to Robert Hook of the Royal Society, is charged with solving the murder of the Queen’s dwarf. But as word spreads that he is solving this crime he is approached by a Countess to find a missing/stolen diamond and to find a man now impersonating the Queen’s murdered dwarf in France. In doing so, Harry discovers an elaborate plot to kill the Queen of England and this becomes the book’s central plot line.Even with these minor complaints, I still find Hunt and Hooke a very promising historical mystery series and am eager for the release of volume three (I'm assuming there will be one). The plot twists are significant, and, as I noted above, one becomes more and more engaged as the title progresses. A year has passed since the sensational attempt to murder King Charles II. London is still inflamed by fears of Catholic plots. Harry Hunt—estranged from his mentor Robert Hooke and no longer employed by the Royal Society—meets Sir Jonas Moore, the King’s Surveyor-General of the Board of Ordnance, in the remote and windswept marshes of Norfolk. There, workers draining the fenland have uncovered a skeleton. I had my doubts about The Poison Machine in the beginning. It took almost half to book for the plot to build up enough that I reached the just-one-more-chapter state of engagement. But said point was reached, and I found myself racing through the book's second half. If you enjoy historical mysteries enough to put up with an initial slow burn, you'll have no trouble enjoying this title. But in Norfolk, he finds that some Royal workers shoring up a riverbank have made a grim discovery-the skeleton of a dwarf. Harry is able to confirm that the skeleton is that of Captain Jeffrey Hudson, a prominent member of the court once famously given to the Queen in a pie. Except no one knew Hudson was dead, because another man had been impersonating him.