A compelling tale of murder and mystery in eighteenth-century London.
It is New Year's Day 1755 and Nathaniel Hopson, journeyman to the famous cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale, finds himself drawn into a chilling affair.
While working at the country home of Lord Montfort, Nathaniel discovers his patron shot dead in his magnificent new library, his faithful hound dead at his feet. The conclusion is obvious: Montfort burdened with gambling debts and recently possessed of a melancholic nature, must have taken his own life.
Nathaniel, however, is not convinced. The gun near Montfort's hand suggests suicide, but what of the blood on the windowsill and the confusion of footprints on the library floor? And there is another strange detail: Lord Montfort was found clutching a small and elaborately carved box of grenadillo wood. Does the answer to this most baffling of mysteries lie within this unusual keepsake?
No sooner has Nathaniel been set up as a most unlikely investigator than another body is found, frozen and cruelly mutilated. Nathaniel's detachment is shattered. He knows the victim well - but what was he doing on Montfort's country estate?
Nathaniel's investigation will take him from the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the slums of Fleet Street and the archives of London's Foundling Hospital, where the identity of a child abandoned twenty years ago may hold the key to the grenadillo box. But someone has already killed to keep this secret and each step Nathaniel takes on his journey is a step further into danger.
'The Grenadillo Box' is a gripping detective story as intricately crafted as a Chippendale cabinet of curiosities. Janet Gleeson has recreated a vibrant eighteenth-century England rich in period detail. The bustling workshop of Thomas Chippendale and the intrigues of Georgian society provide the vivid backdrop to this compelling murder mystery.
