The Graves of Whitechapel
Whitechapel, London in the winter of 1882. Cage (Micajah) Lackmann is a young-ish barrister, charming, handsome and a poet to boot, who ostensibly makes his living and reputation defending the innocent in the criminal courts of London. While he may appear to be a 19th-century younger Rumpole, he is controlled and paid by a thuggish local criminal boss, one Obediah Pincott, a Ukrainian despite his name, who uses Cage to get his criminal, and necessarily guilty, employees off various charges. Cage is therefore very much disliked by the local police. Matters become difficult when there is a murder of a youth, Baxter Spring, dressed in female clothing and garishly made up, using precisely the same modus operandi of a similar murder five years ago. Moses Pickering, whom Cage successfully defended five years ago on that charge of murder, has disappeared after this second murder. Cage becomes the focus of local attention, but as he makes progress in the case, he becomes aware that there is someone looking to implicate him in the crime and threats encircle him. There is a shocking denouement, which certainly throws both the reader and Cage Lackmann.
This is an excellent story, with a meandering and engaging plot set firmly in the filth and horrors of social Darwinian Victorian London. Despite his faults, of which he is himself quite well aware, Cage Lackmann seems to be a decent enough cove who has been thrust by circumstances into a difficult position. The reader wants him to do well, but he is up against a network of wealth, power, crime and corruption. The historical context is admirable and convincing. The novel had the feel of a sequel as it continually referred to events that occurred before the narrative and I had to check that this was not, in fact, part of a series.
