Nigella Parker, Detective Inspector with the City Police, has a deeply rooted fear of fire and a talent for solving deadly arson cases. When a charred figure is found curled beside Sir Christopher Wren’s Monument to the Great Fire of London, Nigella is dragged into a case pitting her against a murderous artist creating sculptures using burnt flesh.
Nigella partners with Colm O’Leary of Scotland Yard to track the arsonist across greater London. The pair are more than colleagues—they were lovers until O’Leary made the mistake of uttering three little words. Their past isn’t the only buried history as they race to connect the dots between an antique nail pulled from a dead man’s hands and a long-forgotten architect dwarfed by the life’s work of Sir Christopher Wren.
Wren, one of London’s most famous architects, is everywhere the pair turn. Digging into his legacy leads the DCIs into the coldest of cold cases: a search for a bookseller gone missing during the Great Fire of London. More than 350 years earlier, while looking for their friend, a second pair of detectives—a lady-in-waiting to the Queen and a royal fireworks maker—discovered foul play in the supposedly accidental destruction of St. Paul’s Cathedral…but did that same devilry lead to murder? And can these centuries-old crimes help catch a modern-day murderer?
As Nigella and O’Leary rush to decode clues, past and present, London’s killer-artist sets his sights on a member of the investigative team as the subject of his next fiery masterpiece.
Evie Hawtrey is an undeniably older, but not necessarily wiser, sister-in-spirt to her fierce and feminist detective, DI Nigella Parker. A Yank by birth, Evie hops the pond frequently, and can be found in York living in history, lingering over teas, and knocking around in pubs. Stateside, Evie lives in the DC metro area, where she loves frequenting the city’s theaters, restaurants and fantastic museums. She has a long-suffering, but appreciated husband, who is not fond of her cats (a dog guy) but puts up with them because marriage is about compromise. Evie’s office is a mess, but her library is meticulously organized. It’s all about priorities.
Evie is a member of both The Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime.
To learn more about Evie and her work, visit www.eviehawtrey.com
Praise
"Bones meets the Restoration Court in Evie Hawtrey's AND BY FIRE, a taut dual-timeline mystery that races along at the pace of an inferno! When London detective Nigella Parker teams up with her Scotland Yard ex-lover to solve a tricky arson case, she never imagines it will lead her to a centuries-old mystery...and another pair of unlikely sleuths from the court of Charles II. As Nigella and her partner race through 21st century London to find a serial killer who sculpts in fire-burned flesh, and a 17th century fireworks-maker and royal lady-in-waiting struggle to find the truth behind the destruction of St. Paul’s during the deadly Great Fire of London, all four lives will hang in the balance. Fresh, dynamic, and crisply researched, AND BY FIRE WILL appeal to histfic fans and mystery readers alike—I couldn't put this one down!"
—Kate Quinn, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Alice Network
"[R]eaders swept up in this double-barreled inferno will forget the history they know as they root for both heroines to bring the malefactors to book before things get even hotter."
—Kirkus
"You’ll smell the smoke, taste the ashes, and feel the tension as you race through this exquisitely researched crime thriller. The plot twists and unforgettable images evoked by Evie Hawtrey’s And By Fire will linger long after you turn the last page!"
—Ellen Marie Wiseman, New York Times Bestselling author of The Orphan Collector
"VERDICT: Both story lines intensify, leading to unusual conclusions in Hawtrey’s debut mystery. The well-developed characters will appeal to fans of historical mysteries or police procedurals and to Anglophiles."
—The Library Journal
"Two determined women, separated by more than three centuries, struggle to uncover a deadly secret that burns at the heart of London. This is a taut and suspenseful read, rich in history and human drama. You won't soon forget it!
—Nancy Bilyeau, Author of The Blue
"You'll burn through the pages of this time-twisty thriller!"
—Mindy McGinnis, Edgar Award Winning author of A Madness So Discreet
As it destroys, fire creates mysteries in Hawtrey’s past and present-day London . . . . Adding to the atmospheric, absorbing mystery is the depth of research Hawtrey has obviously done on both the Great Fire and St. Paul’s and its famous creator.
—First Clue
Present Day London
Chapter 1
Sunday
“Doesn’t it bother you that they got the spot wrong?”
“What?” O’Leary’s comment snapped Detective Inspector Nigella Parker’s focus back to the road. She slammed on the brakes and they screeched to a stop at a red light.
“The point of ignition for the Great Fire of London.” O’Leary wiped away the coffee splashed onto the lid of his Caffè Nero takeaway cup by the sudden stop, took a slug, and then grimaced. “Ever since 1666 when it burned the city end to end, historians insisted the fire started in Pudding Lane, and then some aging House of Common’s Clerk discovers it’s all wrong.”
“Not all wrong. The fire started two-hundred-and-two feet from Wren’s monument, exactly as years of history said—just sixty feet east of where everyone thought.” Nigella tapped the wheel impatiently. It was ridiculously early on a Sunday morning, the City was dead, but she was stuck at the light despite the lack of cross traffic. This was what came from using her own car: no siren, no free pass to blow through lights. Although honestly this one didn’t justify flashing lights.
A nuisance arson: why had the Detective Chief Inspector called her out for that? True everybody called her “the moth” because she had a special affinity for fire cases, but she wasn’t on the early worm. She was an off-duty DI in the Crime Investigation Directorate of the City of London Police summoned abruptly from an early breakfast; although no one would have guessed that given her crisp oxblood blazer and the perfect twist of dark hair pinned up neatly at the back of her head. Nigella thought longingly of the boiled egg she’d abandoned, with its yolk just the right amount of runny and hot buttered soldiers of toast waiting to be dipped in it. It’ll be fit for nothing but the bin when I get home.
“Sixty feet off is wrong enough,” O’Leary said.
She glanced at him sideways: red-gold stubble on his jaw, unmanageable hair sticking up over his forehead. Nigella had texted her counterpart with London’s Metropolitan Police because she owed him one after the Postman's Park murder case, and she knew he’d been assigned the Haringey fire. Her message had clearly found him in bed.
“Why should that bother me?”
“Because, Ni, you have to straighten your toothbrush if it isn’t precisely parallel to the edge of the basin.”
The light changed at last, and Nigella made a sharper-than-strictly-necessary turn onto Fish Street Hill, catching O’Leary off guard and jolting a bit of steaming coffee into his lap. He winced, then gave her the look—the one that said, “you just hate it when I’m right, Parker.”
Yeah, well, fuck him. No, she’d done that for a while, which might be part of the problem.
Ahead, odd portions of Christopher Wren’s monument to the Great Fire of London appeared—a sliver of the base, the top of its massive Doric column sitting like a hat on a commercial building obstructing her view. Rolling up to the curve where traffic from Fish Street Hill bent left onto Monument Street, Nigella slowed. The department had erected a lean-to against the west face of the monument. The wide-end of soot V” protruded above the upper edge of the tarp.
That’s the spot.
The right-hand section of Monument Street, generally off limits to traffic, was cordoned off and full of police cars. Lots of cops for a nuisance arson. A sergeant peered through her windscreen, then moved aside a cone and waved them in.
Parking, Nigella grabbed her bag out of the back. She’d only taken a few steps when DCI Evans swung in beside her. “What’s with the Yard?” He tilted his head in O’Leary’s direction.
“The Yard,” O’Leary responded, “thought this might be related to the arson last week that disrupted the East Coast Mainline.”
“Not.” Evans shook his head.
Nigella wondered how he could be so sure. Then they reached the tent and he lifted the flap. Scorch marks defaced stone, and at their base, on the pavement, a figure lay curled in a fetal position and entirely blackened.
“Holy Mary,” O’Leary breathed.
So, not a nuisance. Self-immolation . . . or murder. Nigella’s breath caught and her pulse raced. It felt as if her heart was rising upwards to meet the air trapped in her lungs. And in her head she heard a voice from her childhood whisper, you’re it Jelly.
My Thoughts
And by Fire by Evie Hawtry, the pen name of Sophie Perinot, is the dual story, one of the Great London Fire of 1666, characters Margaret and Etienne, she a lady in waiting for the Queen of England and him, French fireworks maker. As the fire rages, they discover that a friend of theirs, Thomas, a bookseller, has perished in the fire. In their investigation, they realize that their friend was murdered. Now they have to find out who did it and why. Their investigation takes them to Sir Christopher Wren, the famous architect. Did he murder Thomas to further his career as speculated? Another architect did not receive the credit that he deserved until recently.
Present time, DI Nigella Parker, and her partner Colm O'Leary. They share a romantic history. Their current case involves the death by fire of several people. It is tasked to Nigella and Colm to investigate the case. As they investigate, they come across a volume that has scribbled notes done by Margaret describing their investigation of Wren.
The chapters alternate in time from 1666 to the present time. Impeccable research tells a story about a time in England's history that wiped out a huge population. The story gets hairy when one of the detectives is put in danger by the killer. The story was very descriptive and well done. I have been a fan of Evie, Sophie since I read her first book. She is a wonderful historical fiction author and it is nice to see that she can branch out into the mystery genre and do it so seamlessly.
I give the book 5 stars and hope to see more from Evie Hawtry!
I was given a copy of the book for review purposes only.
