If you were drawn to how The Ashes of London sinks you into ash-choked streets, smoldering churchyards, and the shaky beginnings of Wren’s rebuild while James Marwood and Cat Lovett pick their way through danger, you’ll love the way Dissolution renders Cromwell’s England in tactile detail. Matthew Shardlake’s investigation through dissolved monasteries and Tudor London carries the same lived-in grit and sense that the very buildings—and their wreckage—hold secrets.

Marwood’s tightrope walk between royal officials and the lingering enemies of the Crown—and the way the Great Fire magnifies every political fault line—echo powerfully in A Conspiracy of Violence. Thomas Chaloner navigates Charles II’s faction-riddled court much as Marwood does, where a misstep can be fatal and every favor has thorns. If you relished the dangerous patronage networks that entangle Marwood while he hunts killers and regicides, this Restoration spy-mystery hits the same nerve.

If the alternating viewpoints of James Marwood and Cat Lovett hooked you—letting you see the same peril from two angles—The Poison Bed will scratch that itch. Husband and wife narrators offer clashing testimonies about a murder at the heart of Jacobean power, mirroring how Marwood’s duty-bound lens and Cat’s defiant, covert struggle complicate the truth in The Ashes of London.

If you enjoyed the slow, methodical unspooling of conspiracies after the Great Fire—following leads through charred streets while loyalties shift and motives curdle—An Instance of the Fingerpost offers a masterclass in the long game. Set in 1660s Oxford, four narrators revisit a murder tied to politics and faith, echoing how Taylor steadily tightens the noose around Marwood and Cat as hidden histories surface.

If you were compelled by Marwood’s compromises and Cat’s risky decisions—doing questionable things for necessity in a treacherous London—meet Tom Hawkins. In The Devil in the Marshalsea, a debt-ridden rake is forced to ferret out a prison murder to save his own skin. The moral gray zones and hard bargains feel akin to the choices that drive Marwood and Cat through the smoke and suspicion of The Ashes of London.