Robin Blake

I was born in Preston in the county of Lancashire in the north of England, which is also the hometown of attorney Titus Cragg, and of his friend Dr Luke Fidelis. But the place in which I grew up is very different from the 18th century town that my fictional characters inhabit: that is a lost pre-industrial world as it was before the life and economy of the town were overwhelmed by factory production.

All the Cragg and Fidelis stories are set in Lancashire during the 1740s and are narrated by Cragg, who is the town's, and later the county's, coroner. His investigations are assisted by Fidelis, a young physician with advanced ideas, as well as by his wife Elizabeth Cragg, who he adores, and his clerk the eccentric Robert Furzey. There is nothing Dr Fidelis loves more than a challenging puzzle, while Titus Cragg is passionate for common sense in the service of justice. In a society without a police force the two men operate as a formidable team, investigating suspicious deaths and often falling foul of the well-to-do merchant oligarchy that runs the town strictly in its own interests.

There are six published mysteries in the series so far: A Dark Anatomy (2011), Dark Waters (2012), The Scrivener, titled The Hidden Man in the U.S.(2015), Skin and Bone (2016), Rough Music (2019) and Death and the Chevalier (2020). A seventh title Secret Mischief is scheduled from Severn House in 2021.