The Plague Letters by V.L. Valentine

1665, and the plague is sweeping through the country. Hidden within the ever growing pile of corpses in his London churchyard, Rector Symon Patrick discovers one victim unlike any he has seen before. A young woman with a shaved head, bound wrists and ankles and with strange markings on her body, suggesting that, besides suffering from the plague someone is conducting their own unspeakable experiments upon the dying. When a second body is brought to the church with even more bizarre injuries, Symon joins a society of medical men under the title ‘The Society for the Prevention and Cure of Plague’ who have gathered with the attempt at finding a cure for the terrible disease.

2021 has already been a fantastic year for debut novels, and The Plague Letters is up there with the very best. VL Valentine immerses us in the betrayal, conflict and filth of seventeenth century London. A city ravaged by the stench of death and fear. With a wonderfully dark sense of humour, expertly crafted and eerily beautiful settings and a riotously colourful, crude (and at times, grotesque) range of characters, including the fantastic and mysterious Penelope, just who is she and how come she can speak German? And the brilliantly flamboyant Irish Mystic, Valentine Greatrakes, this is one whodunnit that will creep under your skin and leave its mark.