By Robert Harris.
‘From what is it they flee?’
He took a while to reply. By the time he spoke the men had gone inside. He said quietly, ‘They killed the King.’
1660. Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, cross the Atlantic. Having been found guilty of high treason for the murder of Charles the I, they are wanted and on the run. A reward hangs over their heads – for their capture, dead or alive.
In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is tasked with tracking down the fugitives. He’ll stop at nothing until the two men are brought to justice.
Act of Oblivion is an epic journey across continents, and a chase like no other.
This book is a fictional telling of the execution of King Charles I and the return of King Charles II and the subsequent hunt for the 59 ‘regicides‘ – the men who signed the execution warrant.
Whilst the book is fiction, clearly many of the characters are real as are some of the events described. It’s an interesting story and one I was unfamiliar with- Cromwell and the New Model Army. It was also around this time that there was a plague and the Great Fire of London.
It also includes the new Puritan Colonies that are being established in America, and especially the tale of two of the regicides – William Goffe and Edward Whalley who fled in 1660 to Massachusetts Bay Colony and ultimately New Haven after their involvement in the 1649 regicide of King Charles I.
