A Pair of Sharp Eyes
Young Coronation Avebury takes the coach from Wiltshire to Bristol to start a new life. Because Coronation is blessed with a keen intelligence and a refusal to take things at their face value, she seeks the truth in everything she sees. When young boys are killed with increasing frequency, their throats cut by a man everyone says is a red-haired villain but nobody has seen, Coronation is sceptical and sets out to discover the truth.
She is shocked by the way money is prized more highly than human life, and she sees African slave women torn from their infants and men from their wives, and slaves punished by whips, lashes and shackles. She is also scandalised by the treatment of Jews by the great and good of Bristol. She forms an alliance with Espinoza, a clever and kind Jewish man.
Coronation eventually secures employment as a lady’s maid for the wife of a rich tradesman called Mr Tufnell. Although a good man, he’s a little too free with his hands! His wife is, by contrast, a volatile, devious woman with dark secrets, friendly one minute and then threatening dismissal and worse. When her little African slave-boy, whom Mrs Tufnell treats as a lap-dog and dresses to match her coach, is murdered, Coronation is even more determined. With the assistance of Mr Espinoza, and through severe floods and devastation, she solves the case and brings the murderers to justice.
Not only is this novel a roller-coaster ride of frantic coach rides through floods and collapsing buildings, it is a serious, thoughtful account of racial and religious prejudice, love and compassion. Highly recommended.
