"1820s Britain: after the wars with France, when unemployment was high and soldiers could be paid off, when the government was desperately afraid of social unrest, any crime was drastically punished and thousands were hung. But one could petition the King and an investigation might ensue…

The man in the dark cell in Newgate Prison was due to hang in a week. He had been found guilty of murdering the aristocrat whose portrait he was painting. He claimed to be innocent – but then the hangman had never hung a guilty man, he said. But even in 1820, the Home Secretary could occasionally use his powers to grant mercy if his investigator found cause and Rider Sandman, once of the First Foot Guards, is given the job.

Rider Sandman, a hero of Waterloo, has family debts to repay but when his first steps in the investigations produce a sizeable bribe to look the other way, this only arouses his smouldering anger over the condition of England, a country which he and others in Wellington's army had fought to preserve. Stepping between gentlemen's clubs and taverns, talking to aristocrats, fashionable painters, their models, and their mistresses, dodging professional cut-throats and deceptive swordsmen, Sandman uncovers a conspiracy of silence, a group whose proudest boast was that they would do anything for any one of them."

This was fun - I'd not read anything by Bernard Cornwall before, and not even seen the Sharpe stories on tv. But he's a rollicking good writer, even if his female characters are a bit one-dimensional.

To be released at the York monthly Bookcrossing meetup.

Picked up at the York BookCrossing meetup

"Fun" seems like the wrong word to describe a book where people get hanged and murdered and robbed with such regularity, but it sort of is fun for all that. Chuggypig is right about the female characters - they get to be either feisty or silent, and ugliness is often equated with evil, but then the men aren't that much more rounded. It's not really about the people so much as the story, which is exciting in a faintly daft sort of way.

Released at York BookCrossing meetup

Just letting you know the book is still at the Brigantes.

Since this has been kicking around for a while now, in order to free up some space on the Brigantes OBCZ Bookshelf, I thought I'd move it on to the Ye Olde Starre Inne OBCZ Bookshelf - where hopefully it'll find some new readers...

releasing, as promised...