{"id":1888,"date":"2016-02-28T12:43:21","date_gmt":"2016-02-28T20:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1888"},"modified":"2016-02-28T12:43:21","modified_gmt":"2016-02-28T20:43:21","slug":"sam-thomas-the-midwife-and-the-assassin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/sam-thomas-the-midwife-and-the-assassin\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Thomas: The Midwife and the Assassin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"midwife-assassin\"The excellent fourth installment in Sam Thomas\u2019 Lady Bridget Hodgson series finds Lady Bridget bored at her country estate, where she\u2019s fled with her deputy, Martha, and her adopted daughter, Elizabeth. The quiet is disrupted when she receives a message that her nephew Will (and Martha\u2019s fianc\u00e9e) is at the Tower of London and would they please come? They set out for London at once, eventually making their way to the Tower where they discover an unharmed Will but a demand from Cromwell\u2019s head spy that they work undercover for him.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 1649, deep into Cromwell\u2019s upturning of the English throne and the imprisonment of the King. His head spy, or intelligencer, Mr. Marlowe, secures Lady Bridget\u2019s compliance by telling her will seize her lands and imprison Will if she does not agree to go undercover and spy for him. So Lady Bridget becomes plain Mrs. Hodgson and she\u2019s forced to live in a tenement in Cheapside, where she and Martha set up shop, all the better to keep an eye on the Levelers at the tavern up the road and the tavern\u2019s owner, one Katherine Chidley.<\/p>\n

The Levelers were a then radical group who demanded things like equal justice under the law for all and equal rights for women \u2013 literally hundreds of years ahead of their time. In 1649, they were alarmingly radical. Bridget quickly finds that she likes Katharine and feels terrible about spying on her, but she is quickly tested for loyalty by Mr. Marlowe. Luckily she passes with flying colors.<\/p>\n

Sam Thomas is an actual historian and it shows in the detail he includes in his books, but he\u2019s also a real honest to god novelist, excellent with cliffhangers, suspense and plot twists. I loved the setting and time period of this book, where the world was in complete upheaval with everything being questioned. The centerpiece of the book is the execution of King Charles; coming about half way through, it sets the tone for the rest of the novel which is fraught with surprising violence.<\/p>\n

Unusually, Thomas, a male writer, has a central female character; but he\u2019s masculine in the way he doesn\u2019t hesitate to dispatch just about anyone. People perish surprisingly, and things happen with unexpected suddenness. He\u2019s also great at the various birthing scenes Bridget and Martha are called to attend and they give a real energy to his novels.<\/p>\n

In the course of the story Bridget finds a measure of personal happiness and finds that the hurly-burly of London suits her. She absolutely blooms where she\u2019s planted. I love these books \u2013 I learn some history; I love the characters, and Thomas is an absolutely top notch storyteller. I\u2019ve always thought that if a \u201cregular\u201d book is great armchair travel, an historical novel is even better \u2013 you\u2019re also<\/em> travelling to a different time period with different sights, smells and experiences. This is one of my favorite new series for all the reasons I\u2019ve described, and this is an especially fine entry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The excellent fourth installment in Sam Thomas\u2019 Lady Bridget Hodgson series finds Lady Bridget bored at her country estate, where she\u2019s fled with her deputy, Martha, and her adopted daughter, Elizabeth. The quiet is disrupted when she receives a message that her nephew Will (and Martha\u2019s fianc\u00e9e) is at the Tower of London and would … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-1888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1888"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1890,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888\/revisions\/1890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}