Why a Booktrail?
1849: From Hell, Hull and Halifax, may the Good Lord deliver us.
The Zealot’s Bones
What you need to know before your trail
In 1849, Hull is a city forgotten and abandoned; in the grip of a cholera outbreak that sees its poorest citizens cut down by the cartload.
Into this world of flame and grief comes Meshach Stone, a former soldier, lost upon his way. He’s been hired as bodyguard by a Canadian academic hunting for the bones of the apostle Simon the Zealot, rumoured to lie somewhere in Lincolnshire.
Stone can’t see why ancient bones are of interest in a world full of them…but then a woman he briefly loved is killed. As he investigates he realises that she is just one of many… and that some deaths cry out for vengeance.
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
Visit Hull
Hull
“Kingston upon Hull is no better or or worse than the many cities Stone has passed through on his journeys. It has its rich merchants and politicians, its philanthropists and entrepreneurs. And it has its slums, a sprawl of overcrowded, stinking hovels where the poor beg, borrow and whore their way through short brutal lives.”
Hull Harbour
A place with more stench than most. Where the ships come in and out with their wares from all over the world. And where the rats congregate – both the animals and the human kind. You can smell the stench of the river everywhere in the city and when you’re close to the water, it’s almost unbearable. This was Hull then of course, in the novel, not now but if you head down to the water and visit the Street Museum you can see the vestiges of it all, but without the smells.
Hull Main Cemetery
“Hull is paying the price for its gluttony and lust,’
“It is a pit of devilment and debauchery”
“A rat grown fat through cannibalism and the devouring or filth and faeces”
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Zealot’s Bones
Destination: Hull Author/Guide: David Mark Departure Time: 1849
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