A Conspiracy Thriller/historical mystery novel by Robert J. Lloyd, set in London in the late 1670's, during the reign of Charles II. After the body of a toddler boy who has apparently been killed by having all the blood drained out of his body is discovered on the banks of the River Fleet, Royal Society Curator of Experiments Robert Hooke and his former assistant Harry Hunt are called upon to assist in the investigation. An enciphered letter is found with the boy, and just afterwards Hooke receives a letter encrypted in the same cipher. England in the 17th century being what it is, the circumstances of the child's demise are sure to foment theories about grisly Catholic rituals if they become public knowledge, and the pair of "natural philosophers" fear their inquiries will result in them being swept away in a political and religious conflagration. Then the Secretary of the Royal Society, an acquaintance of Hooke and Hunt and sometimes rival of the former, suddenly turns up dead by suicide. Meanwhile, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the Earl of Shaftesbury, just released from the Tower of London after quarreling with the King, plots revenge with the aid of his brilliant assistant John Locke...
The Bloodless Boy uses a large number of real historical figures as characters and constructs its Whodunnit plot around the scaffolding of many real historical events which took place in the early stages of the "Popish Plot" - a period of anti-Catholic hysteria based on allegations (later found to be totally without basis) of a plotted Catholic uprising where Charles II would be murdered and England would be brought back under the authority of the Pope by force.
The debut novel by Lloyd, The Bloodless Boy was first published in October 2021. The author is reportedly at work on a sequel.
This novel provides examples of:
- Blood Oath: Three of the characters in the novel made a pact by mixing blood while serving together in the English Civil War.
- Creepy Catholicism: What some immediately assume is behind the murdered boy and the grotesque method of bringing about his demise. As news and distorted rumors about the case leak out, they become part of a general growing anti-Catholic paranoia among England's majority-Protestant population at a time when invasion by a Catholic foreign power or a new sovereign trying to forcibly impose Catholicism again are still relevant concerns.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Not the personality classification, but as you might expect with a plot that involves "natural philosophy" and blood in the 17th century, the old blood type system based on the balance of bodily "humors" is referred to.
- Historical Domain Character: Most of the major players, including Robert Hooke (an actual pioneering 17th-century Polymath), Harry Hunt (albeit only really known from references in Hooke's diaries while serving as the latter's assistant), King Charles II, the Earl, John Locke, Titus Oates, Israel Tonge, and Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey. Many other prominent historical figures, such as Sir Isaac Newton (who had a real-life professional rivalry with Hooke) are mentioned in passing.
- Historical Villain Downgrade:
- King Charles II, bordering on Affably Evil. Charles is portrayed as personable, courageous, and apparently innocent of any designs to re-impose Catholicism on England. On the other hand, he is faulted somewhat for essentially ruling as an autocrat without Parliament's input, and his cavalier assertion that Whitcombe's experiments in revivifying the dead would have been worth the human cost if successful at the end of the book paints him in a much worse light. Not mentioned in the novel (as it was unknown even to some of Charles's own ministers and didn't come to light until a century later) is that Charles had secretly made a treaty with France to get the funds necessary to govern without needing to ask for appropriations from Parliament, in return for a promise to publicly convert to Catholicism in the future. To some extent, the portrayal of Charles matches with modern historians' consensus that he was unprincipled and disastrous as a statesman but more of a charming rogue as a person.
- In real life Robert Hooke, while perhaps not as misanthropic as he was portrayed by some biographers, admitted in his diaries to sexually abusing his niece, Grace. In the novel, Hooke is at worst somewhat self-absorbed and lacking in tact, and there is no hint of him doing anything improper to Grace (who is a minor character in the book, serving mainly as a love interest for Harry).
- Historical Villain Upgrade: The Earl of Shaftesbury, and especially his assistant John Locke, remembered in real life chiefly for his political writings on individual liberty and government deriving legitimacy only from the consent of the governed which were hugely influential on later democratic thinkers.
- Sinister Minister: Titus Oates, whose fabricated allegations about a non-existent Catholic plot against the king set off a wave of hysteria.
- Police Are Useless: Played with. Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, while portrayed as an intimidating presence and a conscientious law enforcement officer (although somewhat too willing to assume a sinister Catholic connection behind unexplained events), runs away like a coward when he and several other characters walk in on Shaftesbury's assassin murdering a loose end, and he ultimately ends up murdered himself, as in real life. However, he is the one who discovers the keyword needed to decrypt the cipher texts, although exactly how is not explained.
