SINCE 1819
Father Eadred returns to solve another fenland murder mystery in Lindsay Jacob’s new book, ‘The Last Days’
By Adrian Peel
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Published: 07:00, 28 October 2025
| Updated: 11:35, 29 October 2025
Author Lindsay Jacob’s previous tome, The Fenland Spell, a crime novel set in the Kingdom of the East Angles in the year 832, was featured in the Cambridge Independent in 2023 – and now the historical murder mystery writer is back with the follow-up, the third in his Father Eadred series.
Titled The Last Days: A Father Eadred Murder Mystery, this time around the year is 833 and in the land of the East Angles, the rains have failed.
The poor pray and starve. Then foreign hermits enter the north of the kingdom.
They preach that God’s wrath has fallen on the people because the king and the head of the Church are heralds of the Antichrist and have allowed sin to flourish.
This tense and volatile state of affairs results in lives being lost.
The situation worsens and murder follows. The body of one of the victims is rumoured to have caused a miracle, drawing starving folk to surround the abbey where the body lies.
In desperation, the ealdorman calls on Father Eadred – a simple priest with a proven ability to solve murders – to investigate the crimes.
Lindsay, who was born in Cambridge and raised in Linton, emigrating to Australia at the age of 20, spoke to the Cambridge Independent from his home in the Australian capital of Canberra.
He notes that this new book “goes beyond a murder mystery and takes the reader on a journey into the passions and the fears and the fault lines that shape the Anglo Saxon mind”.
The author, who has always been interested in East Anglian medieval history – especially the fens – says that the book works as a standalone and that readers don’t have to have read the previous two books in order to follow this one.
“It’s very much caught up in the fears of the period,” says Lindsay of The Last Days, “so in that sort of fevered atmosphere, lives are taken…
“And at the same time in the kingdom’s south, a boy with royal connections commits an inexplicable crime, and that spirals out of control and there’s more murders there.”
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Lindsay adds: “Hopefully the reader is drawn into the murder mystery, but also takes that journey into Anglo Saxon times – and is also drawn into the fens at that time, which was a very strange environment.
“It’s not so much these days, obviously, because of draining but it was a very strange environment where, in many senses, the fens were believed to be physically and spiritually a very dangerous area.
“A sort of porous boundary, not only between land and water, but between the everyday world and the unseen realm of dark spirits.
“So it really gets into the mindset of the period – which I’m known for.
“I’m known to be pretty knowledgeable of the period, so I focus it very much on not only my understanding of the location, because I was born in Cambridge – and I was in Cambridge only three months ago – but also I very much draw on my understanding of the period.
“I really try hard to be historically accurate, but also have a story within that context, within the shadows of the facts that we know of and the interpretations that we know of.
“And so far, with the first two books, it’s proved to be a success. I won an award for the book that we spoke about two years ago – The Fenland Spell – so I’m taking it forward from there.”
Lindsay, whose writing has been compared to Ellis Peters, author of the Cadfael books, which were also made into a television series starring Derek Jacobi, was previously a speechwriter for senior Australian politicians.
Early on in his career, he was also private secretary to a minister in the Australian government.
In his job as a speechwriter, Lindsay was able to develop his skills as a creative thinker and writer in imagining the future – but his dream was to give life to the past.
He says he has another “two or three” Father Eadred books in his head – “and I could take it a lot further than that”.
Lindsay adds: “I love East Anglia, I love walking in East Anglia when I’m there – I was brought up there – and I love the period.
“So I’ve got a fair few more, and I want to develop the characters, develop the stories, because it was a fascinating period.”
The first book in the series, Murder at Elmstow Minster, was published in 2021. The Last Days: A Father Eadred Murder Mystery is published today (Tuesday, 28 October) by Troubador and priced £9.99 in paperback.
