With A Cruel Necessity, the first in the John Grey historical mystery series, LC Tyler, takes a sharp turn into the shadows. The year is 1657, Oliver Cromwell is in power in England, and joy has been outlawed. A young lawyer with a taste for beer and pretty women, John Grey finds pleasures enough, even in this backwater Essex town, but he’d be wise to keep his amusement to himself: A Royalist spy has been found dead in a local ditch, and Cromwell's agents make it clear this is nothing to laugh about.