As it destroys, fire creates mysteries in Hawtrey’s past and present-day London. The Great Fire in 1666 is the fulcrum of the historical story. Before the devastation, we find Christopher Wren politicking as he seeks to build his dream dome at St. Paul’s Cathedral, while stingier planners want to continue the never-ending repairs to the existing roof. Initially outsiders to any drama, courtier to the queen Margaret Dove and Etienne Belland, Margaret’s forbidden love (he is both a foreigner and, as the king’s fireworks maker, a lowly tradesman), find themselves drawn into the fray. When their friend is killed in St. Paul’s during the fire, there may have been more to it than met the eye, and the two continue their romance while looking into what really happened. In the modern city, Nigella Parker and Colm O’Leary are police officers assigned to investigate what becomes a deadly series of fires, by an arsonist who arranges both burned wooden bodies and then real charred victims in poses that seem to mock churches. Like Margaret and Etienne, these two shouldn’t be together—they tried it once and nope—and like their 1666 counterparts, they must fight what appearances seem to dictate and what their instincts tell them to be true. Adding to the atmospheric, absorbing mystery is the depth of research Hawtrey has obviously done on both the Great Fire and St. Paul’s and its famous creator. Try this alongside Robert J. Lloyd’s The Bloodless Boy, which also recreates 17th-century London.
