Robin Blake is an author celebrated for his acclaimed works focusing on the artists Van Dyke and Stubbs. His extensive contributions to radio, including writing, producing, and presenting, alongside his prolific career as a critic, highlight his deep engagement with the arts. As a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Brunel University, he continues to foster literary excellence. He resides in London.
County Coroner Titus Cragg has been called to the scene of a gruesome slaughter at a rural farmhouse. Meanwhile, his friend Dr Luke Fidelis is a guest at nearby Orford Hall, where a blackened body is discovered deep beneath the hot-house. Cragg and Fidelis are asked to investigate, and uncover a shocking connection between the two cases.
In 1740, Coroner Titus Cragg investigates the murder of Dolores Brockletower in Lancashire, where lawlessness prevails. He teams up with Dr. Luke Fidelis to navigate local superstitions, official obstruction, and the Squire's denouncements as they seek to uncover the truth behind the brutal crime.
In 1740s England the roots of evil run deep...
The third book in the Cragg & Fidelis historical crime series, from a master of the genre.
An accidental death. A conspiracy afoot. A forensic conundrum...
As the Young Pretender and his Jacobite army approach, Coroner Titus Cragg must solve a brutal murder -and prevent himself being executed for the crime. November, 1745. Preston, Lancashire. Rumours abound that Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, has landed in Scotland, intent on marching south to claim the English throne. Meanwhile, a headless body is discovered in an icy pond. Coroner Titus Cragg thinks he has a lead when a head is eventually found - only to discover that it belongs to a different body. Could there be a connection to the approaching rebel army? Or is someone using the Highlanders' invasion as a cover-up for murder?As simmering tensions, conflicting loyalties and open hostilities split the town, Cragg finds himself arrested for murder. In order to clear his name and escape execution by firing squad, Titus must team up with his old friend, Dr Luke Fidelis, to expose the real killer.
Titus Cragg and his friend, Luke Fidelis, investigate macabre goings-on in a remote Lancashire village in this intriguing 18th century mystery. It’s the sweltering summer of 1744 and when an epidemic disease threatens the town, coroner Titus Cragg retires with his wife and baby son to a remote village in East Lancashire, where he hopes his family will enjoy the healthy and tranquil air. But Cragg finds the rural atmosphere anything but peaceful when he’s called to investigate the horrific death of a local woman who has fallen victim to a cruel community punishment. Assisted by his friend Dr. Luke Fidelis, Cragg begins to probe the village’s prejudices and simmering hatreds, as he untangles crosscurrents of suspicion, rivalry and rural customs which are very different from the ways he knows in the town. Then another local woman disappears, and events take a disturbing new twist…
Can the mind and body affect each other? Can something non-material and subjective work physical change? Does the personality play an active, voluntary role against the body?Ever since medicine became a science, the role of the mind in physical health has been passionately disputed. Thoday. conventional treatments rely almost entirely on drugs, yet there is growing evidence to support what healers have always believed, that our bodies "know" how to become ill and well, and that we can choose one disease over another.In this fascinating book, Robin Blake examines the phrase " it's all in the mind" and reveals the full complexity of the mind's effect on the body, whether for good or ill. He challenges the mechanistic approach of modern medicine and hows that our emotions are deeply involved in the homeostatic processes that sustain life. Along the way, he explores the variablility of pain thresholds, the intelligence of the immune system, the selectiveness of infection, the cellular civil wars of cancer and auto-allergy, and may other phenomena which have baffled science.The body, he suggests, is far more than a biological machine, and doctors and patients alike would benefit from adopting a wider, more holistic view of health. (On reverse of book)
Set in the summer of 1748, the story follows County Coroner Titus Cragg as he investigates the suspicious death of John Lavenham, a London commissioner, in the tumultuous hamlet of Ingolside. Amidst rising tensions from the King's Enclosure plans and a chaotic local population, Titus faces the challenge of conducting an inquest with limited resources and support. Relying on his loyal friend Dr. Luke Fidelis and his own expertise, he navigates a web of gossip and potential violence to uncover the truth behind the murder.
The discovery of a body in a pigsty, shot to death, leads Coroner Titus Cragg and Dr Luke Fidelis into a complex and baffling murder investigation.April, 1746 . When County Coroner Titus Cragg is called to examine a body found shot to death at a local farm, he finds himself drawn into a bizarre and complex case where nothing is as it first appears. As he questions those who knew the victim, it becomes clear that not everyone is telling him the whole truth.Could the motive for the murder lie in a dangerous contract the dead man had signed more than twenty years before, a so-called tontine agreement? Just what does the victim's enigmatic lawyer, Ambrose Parr, know that he's not revealing? As he and Dr Luke Fidelis attempt to track down the six other signatories to the contract, Titus realizes that if they do not find answers - and fast - more violent deaths will surely follow.