FirePaperback, 28 March 2023

London is smoking hot, and not in a good way.

It's the Autumn of 1666, and the Great Fire is still burning, the ashes of hundreds of houses and shops and St. Paul's Cathedral choking the air. The people, too, are choking, raging at the French, the Dutch, at the foreigners who--they are certain--lit the torch. Lord Arlington, the Secretary of State, might conceivably be interested in harnessing this anger: It can be so useful, at times, to have the population united in loathing of a common enemy.

But this is not one of those times. And inconveniently, a Frenchman--clearly an insane Frenchman--has confessed to setting the fire. He did it with an accomplice, he says. And he subsequently killed the accomplice. It's all most irritating for Arlington, or it would be if he didn't have John Grey on call. Go poke around the smoldering ruins, Arlington says. Find me a convenient fall guy. Make this problem go away.