Damn His Blood
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Get 3 months for £0.99/mo
Damn His Blood
Buy Now for £15.99
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Narrated by:
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Michael Maloney
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By:
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Peter Moore
About this listen
The brutal murder of the Rev. George Parker in the rural village of Oddingley on Midsummer's Day in 1806 - shot and beaten to death, his body set on fire and left smouldering in his own glebe field - gripped everyone from the Home Secretary to newspapermen across the country. It was a strange and stubborn case. The investigation lasted 24 years and involved inquests, judges, and coroners, each more determined than the last to solve the gruesome crime.
Damn His Blood is a fascinating glimpse into English life at the start of the 19th century. England was exhausted and nervous: dogged by Pitt's war taxes, mounting inflation, and the lingering threat of a French invasion, violence was rife, particularly in rural communities where outsiders were regarded with deep suspicion. Damn His Blood is a nail-biting true story of brutality, greed, and ruthlessness, which brings an elusive society vividly back to life.
©2012 Peter Moore (P)2014 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
Peter Moore brilliantly paints us word pictures with the skills of a master....
and the inimitable Michael Maloney sparkles as narrator....love it.......
Riveting tale comprehensively written
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Broadly speaking, historic true crime stories can suffer before - say - the Victorian period because there is no contemporary detective to unravel the mystery and precious little evidence for a modern investigator to rediscover in such a way that the reader may be given a compelling conclusion to the mystery. Critchley and James' 'The Maul and the Pear Tree: The Ratcliffe Highway Murders' deals with a similar time period and - though very well done - has this issue.
'Damn His Blood' does not suffer from that issue for reasons that I will not spoil the book by discussing here. It is particularly fascinating because the village society of the early 1800s is that much more alien, being - arguably - the last point that is more unlike us than similar to us (for example: tithes play a big part in this story). This may be a little off-putting to some but I found it very interesting and the author did a wonderful job of fleshing out the individuals and putting important points in context (the phrase in the title, for example, has a venom not immediately obvious to the modern reader). It is probably not a book that is great for listening to whilst doing other things, particularly when dealing with the later period.
The narration is excellent and - this is a rarely achieved and admirable quality in a narration - unobtrusive. Mr Maloney finds the voice of the book and never loses it.
Absorbing tale of murder in a society on the cusp
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lives up to the cover
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Not what I thought
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However, the story settles down and the main characters come alive.
The narration is clear and crisp.
All together, a thoroughly enjoyable book.
An interesting and thoroughly researched story.
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