1876, Alfred Palmer travels to North Wales for an art and history exhibition. The previous curator died mysteriously of a snake bite and Palmer is struck by the feeling that something evil is at work…
Blood Among The Threads is an historical murder mystery set in the 1870s.
Alfred Palmer was a real person with connections to Wrexham but this whole situation has been imagined by the author. I was instantly transported back to Victorian times right from the start as he embarks on a steam train journey and repeatedly uses snuff. The history and geography of the setting are wonderfully evoked at all times.
The first death which occurs before Palmer’s arrival is very suspicious indeed. The curator died after a snake bite on her lip and neck and the adder’s poison soon did its worst. No one can understand why an adder would have been in the woman’s home and been able to injure her in such a way. A mystery indeed! More deaths follow and Palmer is underwhelmed by the police’s attention to the case so decides to investigate for himself.
One of the artefacts that was prepared for the exhibition also draws Palmer’s attention. A mysterious woman claims the tapestry has blood among the threads but could it be linked to the death? Class tensions and even a royal connection also impact on the development of the plot. The characters are richly described and I was immersed in the story. I liked the way that real people and events have been used to create an entertaining fictional story.
Blood Among The Threads is an enjoyable historical novel.
He only sought the truth. But some truths are best left buried.
Wrexham, 1876. Meet Alfred Neobard Palmer, an unlikely hero.
“It was a death which had brought him here. Death by snake venom, of all things.”
Palmer – and his more courageous sweetheart, young Ettie Francis.
A series of accidental deaths which increasingly seem – well, more than simply accidental.
Deaths luring Palmer and Ettie, slowly but surely, towards a terrifying climax through the treacherous waters of the North Wales coast.
But can those deaths truly be linked to the huge coverlet on display at Wrexham’s magnificent Art Treasures Exhibition?
A patchwork of images both Biblical and bewitching. And is there, literally, blood among the coverlet’s threads?
A glittering mystery by award-winning author David Ebsworth.
David’s Bio
DAVID EBSWORTH is the pen name of writer Dave McCall, a former negotiator and workers’ representative for Britain’s Transport & General Workers’ Union. He was born in Liverpool but has lived in Wrexham, North Wales, with his wife Ann since 1981.
Following his retirement, Dave began to write historical fiction in 2009 and has now subsequently published twelve novels: political thrillers set against the history of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War, the Battle of Waterloo, warlord rivalry in Sixth Century Britain, and the Spanish Civil War. His sixth book, Until the Curtain Falls returned to that same Spanish conflict, following the story of journalist Jack Telford, and is published in Spanish under the title Hasta Que Caiga el Telón. Jack Telford, as it happens, is also the main protagonist in a separate novella, The Lisbon Labyrinth. The third of his Jack Telford novels, A Betrayal of Heroes, takes Jack into the turmoil of the Second World War but through a series of real-life episodes, which are truly stranger than fiction.
Dave’s Yale Trilogy tells the story of intrigue and mayhem around nabob, philanthropist (and slave-trader) Elihu Yale – who gave his name to Yale University – but told through the eyes of his much-maligned and largely forgotten wife, Catherine.
The eleventh novel, The House on Hunter Street, is a mystery set during the political turmoil of Liverpool in 1911 and, more recently, Dave has published a non-fiction guidebook of Wrexham history, Wrexham Revealed. It was his research for the guidebook which inspired him to write this current and twelfth novel, Blood Among the Threads.
Each of Dave’s novels has been critically acclaimed by the Historical Novel Society and been awarded the coveted B.R.A.G. Medallion for independent authors.
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