The Thief-Taker
Memoirs of a Bow Street Runner
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
June 1815. When Henry Morton is called to the scene at Portman House in Claridge Square, the Bow Street constable finds a man dead in a hackney coach--ostensibly of asphyxiation. He was Halbert Glendinning, a gentleman of unsullied character. Then why was he seen frequenting one of London’s most notorious dens of iniquity? And why has the driver of the coach vanished into the night?
While Sir Nathaniel Conant, the chief magistrate at Number 4 Bow Street, accepts the official verdict of accidental death, Morton is certain that Glendinning was a victim of foul play. With the help of actress Arabella Malibrant, one of London’s most celebrated beauties, he embarks on his own discreet inquiry. And as the upper circles of London society close ranks against him, Morton races to unmask a killer whose motives are as complex and unfathomable as the passions that rule the human heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Canadian author Banks depicts a Regency London as grimly fascinating as Dickens's Victorian London in this neatly plotted historical introducing Bow Street constable Henry Morton. When the body of Halbert Glendinning, a gentleman of impeccable character, turns up one night in a hackney cab with no driver in Claridge Square, it appears he choked to death on his own vomit. Fearing foul play, the dead man's fianc e hires Morton to investigate. Morton himself suspects poison, but in the early days of forensics such a verdict is difficult to establish. The constable's search for answers takes him from the town houses of the wellborn to the notorious brothels and gin-shops of Spitalfields. What he finds leads him not just to question the mode of Glendinning's death but to uncover a web of deceit and corruption that endangers his own life and reaches far beyond the scope of his original commission. The author brings his characters to life in dialogue both natural and evocative of the period, while the relationship between Morton and his servant, Wilkes, is as enjoyable as that between Margery Allingham's Campion and Lugg. In addition to the small details, Banks captures the complex moral tenor of the time on a variety of social levels (Morton's landlady is appalled to discover she's been renting rooms to a "horney"). Other Regency mysteries may feature historical personages such as Jane Austen or Beau Brummel as detectives, but the fictional Henry Morton shines in his debut without benefit of an established identity.
