by Robert J. Lloyd

SYNOPSIS
The City of London, 1678. New Year’s Day. The body of a young boy, drained of his blood and with a sequence of numbers inscribed on his skin, is discovered on the snowy bank of the Fleet River. With London gripped by hysteria, where rumors of Catholic plots and sinister foreign assassins abound, Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, the powerful Justice of Peace for Westminster, is certain of Catholic guilt in the crime. He enlists Robert Hooke, the Curator of Experiments of the Royal Society, and his assistant, Harry Hunt, to help his enquiry. Sir Edmund confides to Hooke that the bloodless boy is not the first to have been discovered. He also presents Hooke with a cipher that was left on the body. That same morning Henry Oldenburg, the Secretary of the Royal Society, blows his brains out. A disgraced Earl is released from the Tower of London, bent on revenge against the King, Charles II. Wary of the political hornet’s nest they are walking into – and using evidence rather than paranoia in their pursuit of truth – Hooke and Hunt must discover why the boy was murdered, and why his blood was taken. Moreover, what does the cipher mean?

MY REVIEW
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Very happy indeed to be part of the blog tour for this completely immersive part fact part fiction historical crime thriller. So descriptive and well written I was transported back in time to London and the year 1678.
London is being rebuilt following The Great Fire.
The body of a young child, perhaps only 2 years old and drained of blood, is found on the bank of the river Fleet by an eel fisherman. Justice of Peace Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey enlists the assistance of Robert Hooke and Harry Hunt from the Royal Society, which is a society of scientists, to investigate this dreadful crime. Sir Edmund is convinced it is papists and clearly has a deep dislike of Catholicism.
When Hooke gets concerned about where the investigations are leading he insists they stop investigating immediately. his assistant, however, ignores his instruction and carries on, feeling quite elated to be taking responsibility for his own actions and not simply following instructions. He finds himself immersed in a dangerous world and we follow him through the streets of London, stumbling across criminals and assassins, and also uncovering a plot to assassinate King Charles II, as well as finding out the truth behind the bloodless boy.
This is a story with a cast of many colourful characters. There is a helpful list of ’who’s who’ at the beginning to keep track but I found I didn’t need to refer back to it. The author cleverly summarises the plot at various points throughout the book enabling the reader to keep on top of the many strands of the story.
Very highly recommended to fans of crime fiction and historical fiction and I will be buying a copies for Christmas presents.
About the Author
Robert Lloyd, the son of parents who worked in the British Foreign Office, grew up in South London, Innsbruck, and Kinshasa. He studied for a Fine Art degree, starting as a landscape painter, but it was while studying for his MA degree in The History of Ideas that he first read Robert Hooke’s diary, detailing the life and experiments of this extraordinary man. After a 20-year career as a secondary school teacher, he has now returned to painting and writing. The Bloodless Boy is his debut novel. He is at work on a sequel.






















