I may never be able to eat a cucumber without thinking of this book. In 1663, while the rivers of London are bursting their banks and horses are being stolen, the topic of discussion on everyone's lips is all the people who have died while eating cucumbers.

Thomas Chaloner, recently returned from a trip to Portugal and Spain for the Queen, is ordered by his employer, the Lord Chancellor, to investigate the death of a crooked solicitor, Tom Newburne, who died in the Smithfield market while chomping on a cucumber. Cucumbers were unpopular for eating even before this although ladies sometimes used them for their beauty regime and some people made a decoction of the seeds to cure wind. Newburne was about the fifth person known to have died of eating them and almost immediately another man, a musician named Maylord who was a friend of Chaloner's father and who had left an urgent message for Thomas, was found dead with a cucumber in his mouth. Chaloner soon discovered Maylord had been smothered and he suspected that the other deaths attributed to cucumbers were also murder. So he adds those investigations to his roster. He is also concerned that his friend, bookshop owner William Leybourn, has taken up with a woman who seems to have dubious acquaintances and who is probably only interested in Leybourn for his wealth. Some of the people he encounters in his investigations are involved with the newspaper business. There are newsbooks which are printed and government approved and there are newsletters which are hand written. There is a fierce rivalry between the two forms of news gathering with the government newsbooks being run by a rake called L'Estrange and the newsletters being published by the former newsbooks editor, Muddiman. L'Estrange believes that Muddiman is stealing the material from his newsbooks and publishing it before he can get his publications printed. And then added into the mix is the crime boss, the so-called Butcher of Smithfield, who has a gang of thugs at his disposal. He is rumoured to dispose of his enemies by putting their bodies into the pies he sells in his butcher shop. All this transpires as the worst year for rain and storms besets England causing widespread flooding and collapsing bridges. Chaloner tries to make sense of everything while having no money because his employer won't pay him until he solves Newburne's murder. At one point he is reduced to making a rat stew to eat!

I figured out several of the devices used to mystify matters long before they occurred to Chaloner. I don't think it is because I am particularly clever; I just think Gregory made it pretty obvious which is not my idea of a good mystery. For those who have caught up with all of C. J. Sansom's Shardlake books this might be another way to immerse yourself in English history but don't expect it to be of the same caliber as Sansom's books. ( )

This is the third book in the Thomas Chaloner series.

In this book, Thomas has recently returned London after a dangerous four month mission in Spain and Portugal. His patron has asked him to prove that a rather unsavoury lawyer was murdered. The cause of death was ruled as "death by cucumbers". Thomas finds himself in the middle of a number of these kinds of death, and he has to try to unravel what is going on.

Problems abound, confusion is the rule of the day, and London is nearly drowning in a flood caused by massive rains and a high tide that overlap. Thomas does his damn best to keep his head when everyone else is losing theirs - sometimes literally.

Picturesque and descriptive, you can literally smell the scents of Old London through the pages. ( )