Gallows Thief
By Bernard Cornwell
A stand-alone story, Gallows Thief is set in 1817 Regency London following the collapse of Napoleon.
Our hero is Rider Sandman, formerly a captain of the 52nd Foot and a distinguished combatant at Waterloo. He also happens to be a very good cricketer, which is where we first find him, throwing his match fee back in the face of the owner, since he just realised the blackguard had fixed the match and bet against his own side.
This shows Sandman’s resolute side, since he is in financial peril, his late father accumulating massive debts before despatching himself with a gunshot between the eyes. Sandman has taken on responsibility for his mother and sister (keeping them in the comfort to which they are accustomed and so on) but also for paying back the debts. Unemployed, he could really do with that match fee.
He finds himself offered a job. Easy money. It sees him become Sandman PI, though that’s him taking it far beyond what he should do.
All he has to do is extract a confession from someone who has already been found guilty in a court of law of the rape and murder of a countess. It turns out that his mother is a maid to the queen and has asked her to intercede. “He couldn’t hurt a fly, blah blah”, we’ve all heard it quoted in spite of concrete proof to the contrary.
Anyway, the Queen has interceded, writing to the home secretary to look into the case. The authorities care nothing for this, so are willing to pay the a week’s worth of wages to get a confession from the chap … so, investigate the case.
It’s easy money, so off he goes. When he sees the waifish young boy, he feels an element of doubt. Nonetheless, he steels by remembering the advice of the turnkey: “Everyone in here is innocent if you ask them.”
The boy starts crying and Sandman fixes to start punching, but he stops himself. There’s something about what the boy is saying that merits further investigation.
In a nutshell, what we have is a one-week adventure to find out who the real culprit is. It’s a good read, Cornwell making a very convincing description of that time’s Newgate, the class structure and the societal distance resulting from it.
On his adventure, Sandman benefits from his fearless friend Sally Hood and a sergeant who remembers him from Waterloo (Sam Berrigan) who is aware of much criminal activity at a gentlemen’s club called The Sephirim.
As he moves away from rubber-stamping the death sentence and determining the artist’s innocence, he finds that not only has a price been put on his head, but he is also offered a bribe of 20,000 guineas by The Sephirim to cease investigations.
Travelling far and wide, he eventually comes up with a witness … who refuses to talk when presented to the home secretary on the morning of the execution. Sally plays on this woman’s fear of wasps to encourage her to tell the truth … and when she names the culprit, it turns out to be a surprise to all.
The home secretary writes a quick note to have the suspension quoshed but it’s a little late when the poor artist is already suspending from the noose. He is saved by Sally’s brother, a notorious highwayman Jack Hood.
Under the surface, this book has an anti-death-penalty message. The initial scene has a girl being hanged for stealing her mistress’s necklace, not that it was ever discovered, and her protestations of innocence in the face of an evil vicar who is bellowing at her to confess her guilt before she drops are pretty harrowing, especially as it’s dropped casually in to conversation later that the mistress found the necklace down the back of her sofa a little later. It’s quite chilling to consider a time when people weren’t particularly bothered about guilt, including those in the crowd.
This was a fun read though. I got through it in under 24 hours, which, for a 400-page book, must mean it’s a pretty hard one to put down 
Tags: Bernard Cornwell