Description

1743, and the tanners of Preston are a pariah community, plying their unwholesome trade beside a stretch of riverside marsh where many Prestonians by ancient right graze their livestock. When the body of a newborn child is found in one of their tanning pits, Cragg s enquiry falls foul of a cabal of merchants, dead set on modernising the town s economy and regarding the despised tanners – and Cragg s apparent championship of them – as obstacles to their plan. The murder of a baby is just the evidence they need to get rid of the tanners once and for all.

But the inquest into the baby s death is disrupted when the inn in which it is being held mysteriously burns down. Then Cragg himself faces a charge of lewdness, jeopardising his whole future as a coroner. But the fates have not finished playing with him just yet. The sudden and suspicious death of a very prominent person may just, with the help of Fidelis s sharp forensic skills, bring about Cragg s redemption…