User:Ccarrandii/The Blood Doctor

The Blood Doctor
The Blood Doctor is a Crime novel written by written by British author and writer Barbara Vine, the pseudonym of her actual name Ruth Rendell. This novel also falls under the category of Historical fiction and Mystery fiction.

The Author
The author of this novel is Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh. Her pseudonym, which she uses in many novels is Barbara Vine. Ruth Rendell was born on February 17, 1930 in South Woodford, Essex, England. She was a british writer of mystery novels, crime fiction novels and short stories. Her highest form of education was a high school diploma, which she obtained at Loughton County High School. Rendell worked as a reporter and copy editor for the West Essex newspapers. Eventually, she wrote her first novel and from there sprouted her career as an author of novels. Her life as an author came to an end on May 2, 2015 in London when she passed away.

Ruth Rendell wrote many novels and short stories throughout her lifetime. Some of those novels include, The Brimstone Wedding (1995), No More Dying Then (1971), No Man's Nightingale (2013), Grasshopper (2000), among many others.

Plot
This book by Barbara Vine is about a "mystery in history". In this novel, Martin Nanther, the main character of this book, is looking for information regarding the life of his great-grandfather. Martin is a biographer and he is a part of the House of Lords in his society. The House of Lords is this group of important people, basically royalty in their society. During this time, they were making changes to this group. They were banishing those that got this position based on their family. Those that were handed down this position were going to be taken out and Martin was one of those.

Martin writes biographies for the important, top tier, people in their society. While he is researching information about his great-grandfather, he discovered that his great-grandfather was an on hemophilia. He was obsessed with knowing all there was to bleeding disorders. Dr. Henry Nanther was also Queen Victoria's physician. When he found out that her eighth child was diagnosed as a hemophiliac, he began to find ways to treat that child. He even had very thorough diaries about the blood disorders he encountered, with the idea in mind of someone one day writing a biography about him.

As Martin dives deeper into his research on his great-grandfather, he discovers that in his family tree, hemophilia was present. He continued to dive deeper, looking into past generations to find out that his great-grandfather was not all he was made to be. There were many questions and discrepancies, of which made no sense with what his great-grandfather said and other people mentioned about him. His great-grandfather hand morale and lacked good character. Martin discovered that because he worked very closely with Queen Elizabeth, they had an affair that engendered a child, passing on the title of Lord Nanther without anyone knowing. He was also very sinister. He had a fiancee, and while he was with her, he had a mistress. He also had two other lovers and abandoned each one of them without a notice. When his fiancee was killed, he married her sister. It was even said that he committed many abominable crimes during his career.

After Henry passed away, with even further research, Martin realized that there was a secret Henry took to the grave and he wanted to discover what it was.

Reception
This novel has a rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars on Goodreads with 1,649 ratings and 161 reviews.

See also[edit]

 * The Chimney Sweeper's Boy
 * The Minotaur (novel)
 * Grasshopper (novel)