Paternoster: an Eden Grey mystery by Kim Fleet. History Press, 2015

This book is set in two time periods: London and Cheltenham in 1795, in London in 2012 and 2015 and Cheltenham in 2015. The main action in 1795 takes place in various brothels and the main characters are prostitutes. The story begins in London but moves to Cheltenham  which is becoming more popular with the wealthy taking its waters.
The main character in 1795 is Rachel Lovett who, at the start of the story, is being kept by a young man from a wealthy aristocratic family but, let down by her lover, she moves into a brothel.
The main character in 2012 and 2015 is Eden Grey, as in the subtitle of the book. In 2012 she had a different identity and was working as an undercover police woman but, when the case went wrong and she nearly died, had to accept a witness protection scheme. Emerging as Eden Grey, private investigator, in 2015 she takes on a variety of cases which come her way including missing persons, fraud and infidelity. In her current case, however, she becomes involved with two murders and, with the help of Aidan, her archaeological boyfriend, she uncovers the link between past and present in the underground tunnels of Cheltenham Ladies' College and stories of the Hellfire Club. The book is a definite page turner and is written in an economical and convincing style; looking forward to more Eden Grey mysteries.

Fludd by Hilary Mantel. Penguin, 1990.

This book is set in a bleak remote moorland village in Derbyshire in which the population is of a predominantly Catholic-type religion in the mid 1950s. The first characters that the reader meets are Father Angwin and his housekeeper, Miss Dempsey. Father Angwin is a Catholic priest (or similar) who has lost his belief in God. As well as a church and a school the village has a convent which is ruled over by Mother Perpetua who metes out physical punishment at will to the sisters who reside inside. The local Bishop has ordered Father Angwin to remove some of the statues in the church so the Father decides to bury them in the churchyard. The Bishop has also said that he will send a curate to Father Angwin to help him out in his time of indecision. In the meantime a stranger arrives at Father Angwin's front door in the middle of the night and gives his name as Fludd. Father Angwin assumes that he is the curate but the reader knows that he is not. The main theme of the novella is the difference between appearance and reality and the reader begins to suspect that Fludd is either an angel or a devil. Another character in the story is Sister Philomena who lives under Sister Perpetua's tyrannical rule and who undergoes a transformation in the book.
The writing is elegant, concise and unexpected.