On the 12^th of October, 1678, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey left his house in the morning and vanished without trace. There were some alleged sightings of him, but five days later, his body was found in a ditch on Primrose Hill. He had been impaled on his own sword although it was promptly realised that he had been stabbed after death – his body was covered with bruises, he had been strangled and his neck was broken.

Hang on, this sounds awfully familiar…

Magistrate John Grey is summoned from his Essex estate to find some sense in the mystery. The suspects have links to both the government and the King himself. Can the true murderer be exposed? And if they are, what would be the result of that exposure be?

I’ve had Carr’s take on the Godfrey case sitting on my shelf for an age, but it was this title that prompted me to read it. The John Grey series is one of my favourite historical mystery series, and as it hits the correct year, it must have been hard for Len to avoid tackling the real-life case. Just like Carr, the author has his own theories about what happened to Godfrey, but he takes a much different approach to presenting that theory.

By inserting John Grey and his wife Aminta (who, as ever, steals every scene) we are provided with an actual detective and a focussed investigation from someone who is not involved in the case, an independent point of view. This does help a lot with identifying the contradictions in the evidence and bringing speculations into the narrative. This is briefly interrupted by descriptions of Godfrey’s last days – multiple different ones, in fact, given Aminta’s talents as a playwright.

This is still part true crime analysis. In order to keep the facts as they are, Grey is primarily an observer rather than interacting with events beyond talking to the suspects. This does give something of a sense of separation between the events and the leads. However, Len does make the wise choice of paring back the characters, with some of the cast of Carr’s book who really have nothing to do with anything being left on the cutting room floor. There are still a lot of characters, but it’s got to a more manageable number.

The author concludes with a discussion of the other theories – Carr is far from the only person to try and solve the mystery of Godfrey’s death – including his reasons for dismissing the other solutions. It has to be said, he makes a very good case. Maybe the three deaths of Edmund Godfrey have finally been solved…

The Three Deaths Of Justice Godfrey is out now in hardback and ebook. Many thanks for the review copy.

The John Grey Mysteries

• A Cruel Necessity (2014)
• A Masterpiece of Corruption (2016)
• The Plague Road (2016)
• Fire (2017)
• The Bleak Midwinter (2018)
• Death of a Shipbuilder (2020)
• Too Much of Water (2021)
• The Summer Birdcage (2022)
• A Well-Earned Death (2023)