London in 1543 is a city of turbulence and intrigue. Stinks, mud and ships characterise the wide river, while the streets are full of ragged people and beribboned merchants. Those who move in the night seem sinister. THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER Bianca Goddard keeps a workshop in Southwark where she tinkers with potions, medicinals and physicks. Having seen her father waste his life in search of a philosopher's stone, she's not so keen on alchemy for its own sake.

Bianca's friend John would happily wed her, but he's only an apprentice silversmith. He'll need to be a master with his own shop before he can support a wife. Her other friend Jolyn, a mudlark turned housemaid, sadly has minutes to live, as we are told when we first meet her. Bianca then has to explain away Jolyn's unexpected death in her shop. Between plagues of rats, coroner's evidence, purgatives and emetics, this tale isn't for the dainty or tender. Bianca has to deduce what might have caused her friend's death, or be condemned as a murderer. Where to start?

A ship with some deceased crewmen aboard ties up at the docks, but the customs official finds the bodies as he tots the taxes due on ivory and silks. Immediately he quarantines the Cristofur, but is it too late? The rats have already started swimming to shore. Plague has hit London many times during the past two hundred years... will it rear its head again? Also, during Henry the Eighth's reign, there are many ways to offend the King, such as following a different religion. Those thrown in jail can expect short lives. With Constable Patch of Southwark holding a warrant for her arrest, Bianca must work fast, despite the perils of the City.

With Bianca and her associates as guides we explore the past of London in all its unsavoury, unsanitary glory. The river may be a running sewer and the inns full of cutpurses, offal pies and watered ale, but we can recognise the people and their fight for a better, or at least a sufficient, life. 'The Bianca Goddard Mysteries' will continue to explore Tudor England, and this first instalment THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER leaves us shivering, aware of our miraculously improved living conditions and in awe of our forebears. Mary Lawrence has drawn this portrait with much research, empathy and admiration. And plenty of rats.