The Thief-Taker: Memoirs of a Bow-Street Runner
In June 1815, as Wellington’s army faces down the French somewhere in Belgium, in London the officers of Bow Street wage war against thieves and murderers.
Officer Henry Morton is urgently called to Lord Arthur Darley’s Portman Square by his sometime mistress, the actress Mrs. Malibrant, after Halbert Glendenning is discovered unconscious in a hackney coach. After a physician summarily pronounces him dead, Bow Street declines to pursue the case. Morton, suspicious of the circumstances, is immediately employed to investigate by the deceased’s grieving fiancée. Morton’s effort to link the murder to the recent theft from the collection of Elgin marbles not only imperils him and Mrs. Malibrant, but it threatens his reputation within the Bow Street establishment. It also thrusts him into a friendship with Lucy, a child trapped in the seamy, sexually charged atmosphere of a notorious flash-house.
Regency England and its popular culture are depicted with accuracy and insight. A tour-de-force of suspense and historical writing, this new series is assured a devoted following.
