Book review – Seething Lane by Jack Jewers

I have just finished reading Seething Lane by Jack Jewers, a novel in which Samuel Pepys is reinvented as a sleuth, swashbuckler and firefighter, acting on behalf of Charles II to investigate the murder of a libertine aristocrat. First of all, thanks to the lovely people at Moonflower for sharing this pre-sale copy with me but, having read every single word, I can safely confirm that this is not my genre. I prefer my fact and fiction to be strictly delineated, unless the resulting faction is historically correct. Jewers' characters here are a mix of real people interspersed with fabricated, mostly theatrical players. It's Pepys as TV sleuth with Nell Gwyn as his bawdy Cockney 'I ain't heard nothing' sidekick. I'm not seething, just disappointed. I struggled. I kept stopping within the narrative to double-check things that I was convinced couldn't be historically possible. I kept questioning why he/she might have known him/her, why person X would have done something when the history…