The Bear Pit

* Read Shona MacLean's new novel, The Cromarty Library Circle, out now! *
London, 1656.
Oliver Cromwell is now a king in all but name. Three conspirators, an alliance of Royalists and disillusioned Parliamentarians, plan to assassinate him.
Seeker, though, is preoccupied by the discovery of the body of a man ravaged by a bear - creatures not seen in the capital since bear baiting was banned. The hunt for the killer leads from Kent's coffee house on Cornhill, to a German clockmaker in Clerkenwell, to the desolate Lambeth Marshes where no one should venture at night.
As the motivation behind the murder becomes clearer, Seeker realises just what - and who - he is up against. The Royalists in exile have sent to London their greatest fighter, a man who will stop at nothing to ensure the Restoration.
Praise for The Seeker series
'A gripping tale of crime and sedition in an unsettled city' Sunday Times
'One of the best historical crime series out there' Crime Review

S.G. MacLean (Shona) has a PhD in History from the University of Aberdeen. She is the author of two historical crime series - the Alexander Seaton series, set in seventeenth century Scotland and the Damian Seeker series, set in Oliver Cromwell's London, for which she has twice won the CWA Historical Dagger. Her standalone Jacobite thriller, The Bookseller of Inverness, was Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year 2023. Shona lives in Conon Bridge, Scotland.