Robert J Lloyd – Melville House Press – £18.99 In 1678 London was rebuilding after the Great Fire of London, just twelve years earlier. Among the great men undertaking this enterprise was Robert Hooke, who is a central character in Rob Lloyd’s The Bloodless Boy. A scientist and energetically modern visionary: “Some parts of Nature are too large to be comprehended, some too little to be perceived. Our most solid definitions are imperfect, only expressions of our misguided apprehensions, not the true nature of things themselves.” Hooke was a man of boundless curiosity. But in this novel Hooke finds himself reluctantly drawn into a perplexing murder mystery, with his friend and recent assistant Henry Hunt, who risks life and limb to investigate. In 1678 the Civil War was also a recent convulsion, and the political aftershocks of that febrile time provide the fuel that ignites the present fire. What appears to be the inexplicable murder of a small boy, exposes abominations, revenges, and a plot to kill the King.