Captain William Coke lives as a thief with a conscience, in C.C. Humphrey’s historical thriller, Plague. Never loading his pistol with anything more than powder, he carefully selects his victims from the wealthy and the pompous. But he soon walks into crimes far more horrific than robbery.
Captain Coke and Dickon, a rescued street urchin, never expected to find their marks slaughtered on the road to London. Coke has never seen a killing like this, not even on the battlefield fighting to restore his king to the throne in the English Civil War. Pitman, a thief-taker, is likewise shocked by the brutality of the murders supposedly committed by the highwayman he has come to see as a gentleman bandit. Now, Pitman will stop at nothing to find Coke, who has become known as the Monstrous Coke after the notorious murder.
As the murders continue, the victims piling up, Pitman and Coke begin to realize that this criminal doesn’t just kill, but kills with religious symbolism. The two eventually team up to find the murderer. When the killer brutalizes and murders an actor, his wife and fellow actress, Sarah, becomes an ally of the men who are chasing him.
The would-be detectives face yet another obstacle when the Black Plague breaks out across the poverty-stricken parts of London. These unlikely heroes must now dodge not only the law, but a serial killer, a deadly illness, and a heretical cult who search for that which will take them from the gutters to the palace.
Coke, Sarah, and Pitman contrast one another, each with a well-developed character. Captain Coke first meets Sarah when he is fulfilling a pledge to visit and check on Lucy, the sister of his closest friend Quentin, a fellow soldier who was killed nearly twenty years prior. When Lucy finds herself unmarried and pregnant, Coke doesn’t hesitate to help her even though it means putting himself in harm’s way.
He has also taken in Dickon, a boy with both physical and mental disabilities, and will kill if need be to protect him. Coke is a criminal, but also a kind and gentle man. Pitman uses his remarkable abilities to stay ahead of his time with his crime scene investigations, and no one catches more thieves than him. As a constable, he must shut up the homes of plague victims with their families inside – infected or not – causing great distress to the big-hearted Pitman. In his kindness, he can see the impossibility of Coke committing the terrible murders, and though the two fought on opposing sides in the war and now live on either side of the law, they develop an easy friendship, trusting each other with their very lives.
Sarah Chalker owes much of her success as an actress to the protection of her husband, John. As childhood sweethearts, she and John have fought their way from the gutters of St. Giles to a place in the Duke’s Company, a theatre group frequented by Charles II himself. When John is killed, the sheer brutality of his murder drives Sarah on to find the vicious killer. She doesn’t hesitate to join with Coke and Pitman even though the search will put her in grave danger without the advantage of her male counterparts.
Religion plays a huge role in the novel.
On the heels of the English Civil War and the Restoration, London in 1665 is full of unrest. With the Act of Uniformity and the Act of Conventicles keeping dissenters from practicing anything other than the “accepted” Church of England within the city, all who choose to worship differently must do so in secret. This need for secrecy provokes many to violence, including the Fifth Monarchists, who seek to bring about the Apocalypse and the coming of Jesus.
With the year 1666 fast approaching, the Fifth Monarchists find the end times in every facet of the city. From its sprawling corruption to its massive poverty, London yearns for its brand of justice and a crescendo to the devil’s time. Among these “Saints” the serial killer hides, committing his atrocities in the name of his religion. The religious symbolism connected to verses in Revelation truly takes this thriller into the realm of the sinister. Chapters from the murderer’s point of view show this obsession for Apocalyptic cleansing of the sinful falseness of London. This obsession contrasts sharply with Pitman’s own faith. Pitman, a Quaker and therefore a dissenter himself, uses his religion and beliefs to practice strength and kindness. The near-complete lack of religion in the other characters keenly expresses the duality of the novel.
Plague takes the reader on a thrilling ride through the gritty parts of seventeenth-century London, and readers of history and mystery alike will enjoy its shocking twist ending.
