Amazon Review
Times have changed since the austere reign of Cromwell, and England is enjoying more freedom, particularly regarding Christmas, which now has a genuinely joyous feel. There are those, of course, who regard this new indulgence as an invitation to frippery and laxity, such as the Treasury Clerk Christopher Vine, who is working late in the Palace of Westminster, cloistered in the striking setting of the Painted Chamber. But Vine’s dedication to his job is to cost him his life -- a ruthless murderer is stalking the same building, and Vine does not have long to live. More deaths take place, taking the gloss off the festive season, and the Lord Chancellor begins to feel that his investigations are under threat, compromised by the machinations of his enemies. He suspects that the killer is a clerk, Greene, and commissions the resourceful Thomas Chaloner to investigate.

This is the premise of Susanna Gregory’s The Westminster Poisoner, and if you're at all familiar with her highly reliable brand of historical crime fiction, you will know that you are in for something of a treat. As Chaloner begins to unpeel the layers of deception around the killings -- and finds that there is much interest in his employer’s background -- he is plunged into a morass of corruption and double-dealing in which no one can be trusted.

As always with Gregory, the impeccable plotting is matched by the vivid conjuring up of a long past year: 1663 is brought to life for the reader in all its splendid and squalid aspects, with Chaloner the perfect guide through this (at times) surrealistic universe, often very like the present day (the political corruption might suggest a few modern-day parallels), but also massively different from the Britain we know. Even if you feel you have no taste for historical crime fiction, it might be in your interest to overcome your prejudices in this case. --Barry Forshaw