In the late seventeenth century, an Englishman could make a fortune in the West Indies. Harvesting sugar cane while exploiting slave labour was a profitable enterprise, but a series of natural disasters combined with his own incompetence has caused Hubert Umfraville to abandon his plantation and return to England with his family to start again.

Barely has he arrived at the house that he has rented in Essex before he is found dead in the orchard, his head bashed in by a rusty axe. Umfraville has a lot of enemies, it seems, both from England and the West Indies, but which of them decided that this was the perfect time to silence him.

John Grey, the local magistrate, finds himself investigating the death of someone who seems to have deserved what was coming to him. But when suspicion falls on a long-lost relative, Grey has some awkward decisions to make…

Well, Len has chosen the perfect theme for a light-hearted historical mystery – slavery! Actually, let’s address that “light-hearted” accusation first of all. Yes, there is a light tone in Grey’s narration, but the series has never shied away from serious issues. It can’t be an easy task to marry an entertaining narrative voice, but, by crikey, Len makes it look easy here.

An interesting choice is made here by mostly confining the action to a small town in Essex, where the inhabitants possess varying degrees of knowledge of the world outside their borders. The reactions to the possible appearance of an escaped slave, as well as the reaction to a very different sort of… well, I’m not going to spoil that aspect of the story, but one aspect of that character’s arc almost feels as if the author decided that including just slavery as a potentially controversial theme and decided to raise the stakes. Len Tyler does a very good job of not imposing modern sensibilities on his characters, although by necessity John Grey needs to be more understanding than most.

Oh, there’s a good mystery here too, together with such mystery staples as a disappearing body, and a bucketload of red herrings, and the combination of some of the darker themes from history together with one of the most entertaining narrators in crime fiction makes this an excellent read. Quite possibly the strongest book in the series to date, it’s also a good jumping on point.

A Well-Earned Death is out from Constable in hardback and ebook on November 16^th. Many thanks for the review copy.