A Dark Anatomy by Robin Blake

This is the first book I am reading by Robin Blake. It is set in 1740s England and of course is a murder mystery. A local gentlewoman has been found dead with her throat cut. The body is found in the woods by the workers of the estate who go searching for her, when her horse comes back riderless. The coroner who is the main character of the story is called in, as this is an unexplained death.

This is a story that is intriguing in many ways. The murder and the attempt to find the truth is one puzzle. When trying to uncover what happened the author gives a fairly good account of what the state of policing and of forensics was. The policing was practically non-existent and as for understanding of the human body and its complexities was in its infancy. The human nature and simplistic outlook of the people is well portrayed. The coroner is a very meticulous man and works hard to discover the truth with the help of his friend who is a doctor and usually performs the post-mortem. He sets about getting his jury together to hold the inquest when the body disappears from the ice house where it had been placed till the doctor could view it.

Granted the woman was not well-liked and there were none who mourned her death. The husband is the prime suspect but has an iron clad alibi. He does not want an inquest or a post-mortem and wishes the coroner would treat it as an accident. How can this be if the throat had been cut from ear to ear? Surely the husband has something to hide, especially since it was known that the marriage was unhappy one and he had been trying to get a divorce from his rich Jamaican wife. He surely needed the money as he was working on a building project. The architect who manages the project also appears to have something to hide. The workers in the estate have little information that can help in finding the truth.  

Who would benefit from her death and subsequently from taking away the body? Was this the work of the murderer? In order to hide the truth that might be revealed if the post-mortem was carried out? Was it the body snatchers who were stealing dead bodies and selling them to anatomists for dissection? Was there any truth is the rumours that the lady was a werewolf? There is such mixture of beliefs and myths and what in the present day may sound totally ridiculous was a firm belief of many in those times.

This is a very descriptive novel with details of the times and also out of the need to detect crime. After all there are no fancy gadgets to use but only the human mind and thinking. It is however a different flavour to the other murder mysteries that I have read which were set in different times. The discussion and thinking relate to philosophy, medicine, law, truth, anatomy, religion and so on. Many subjects dealt with to give a good mystery and a small lesson in history. Well worth a read. I shall look for other books by this author.