Gallows Thief

Product Description

1820s Britain: after the wars with France, when unemployment was high & soldiers could be paid off, when the government was desperately afraid of social unrest, any crime was drastically punished & thousands were hung. But one could petition the King & 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 & 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 Engl&, a country which he & others in Wellington's army had fought to preserve. Stepping between gentlemen's clubs & taverns, talking to aristocrats, fashionable painters, their models, & their mistresses, dodging professional cut-throats & deceptive swordsmen, Sandman uncovers a conspiracy of silence, a group whose proudest boast was that they would do anything for any one of them.

Product Information:
• ISBN: 9780007437559
• Author: Bernard Cornwell
• Publisher: Harper Collins
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 352
• Dimensions: 19.56 x 12.7 x 2.29cm