A Just and Upright Man (The James Blakiston Series) - Softcover

Lynch, R J

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1910194034 ISBN 13: 9781910194034

Publisher: Mandrill Press, 2013

Synopsis

Reuben Cooper was everybody’s enemy. When his cottage burns in the night with the old man inside, the village is more inclined to go back to bed than to fetch water. James Blakiston, the young land agent, is not. Cooper was beaten to death before the fire was lit; whoever did it believed the rumours of gold in the walls.

Blakiston is an outsider: a Sussex gentleman’s son with a ruined father, a lustful past he would rather forget, and a master, Lord Ravenshead, who would prefer him to count sheep than corpses. The parish he must question is closed against strangers, ruled by hunger and the Poor Law, and about to be enclosed. Its rector is a philosopher, its curate a fanatic, its constable a dissenter who should not hold the office at all. And in the Greener household, where Lizzie Greener has been raped by Ravenshead’s son and must be married off before she shows, a sister with grey eyes and a sharp tongue will change Blakiston’s life more than any murder.

Before the year is out there will be another body, a missing man, a hanging for a brace of rabbits, and a killer nobody has thought to suspect.

The first book in the James Blakiston series: a murder mystery of the Georgian north-east, where justice belongs to those who can afford it, and the just and upright man is harder to find than the gold.

About this title

From the Author

I received an email telling me that A Just and Upright Man was rubbish and my correspondent was pleased that she'd bought it for her Kindle and read it quickly because she'd been able to get her money back from Amazon, the miserable skinflint, and so my trash hadn't cost her anything other than the few hours of her time I'd stolen.
My offence was to write an historical romance/crime novel from the point of view of the people at the bottom of the social heap--the poor. Lizzie Greener and her family, as well as Tom Laws and his, should be beneath notice. Literature, whatever that is, should concern itself only with the upper classes. If some people of the past are invisible there is, it seems, a reason for that. They are not worthy of notice.
Well, I can't agree. I suppose I'm influenced by the fact that, if Lizzie Greener and Tom Laws had not lived in the northeast two hundred and fifty years ago then I wouldn't be here now, but it's more than self-interest. Those peasants and paupers whose every day was a struggle to survive make for better fiction than some spoilt princess.In any case, they're not invisible. You have to look a bit harder--I've spent hours in archives around the country, going through original documents, and I'll spend hours more and after doing that for a while these 'invisible' people start to look out at you from the pages. Look at this from a 1765 parish account book:
Three Fox and two Foulmartens heads four and twopence
Who trapped and killed those foxes and martens so that they could claim the bounty? And what did they do with the money? Four shillings and twopence was a fortune at a time when they could also write:
To Hauxley Todd for 2 carts of coals & loading three shillings and eightpence
and when it cost the parish a guinea--one pound and one shilling--to keep Edward Scott in the Poor House for 14 weeks.In 1745 there were sixteen paupers in Ryton Constablery (sic) and we know their names and how much they were given to get them through the year (it wasn't much). Turn to the parish registers and there they are lined up for us: the year of their birth; the year they were baptised (not always the same as the birth year and there's a story there, too, for anyone who cares to look); the names of their parents; who they married (and when); what children they had; and when they died.
What about Richard Evans, imprisoned and sentenced to hard labour for being "a loose disorderly fellow of ill fame". Evans was convicted on no more than the oath of a churchwarden. Who is going to tell his story if not me? And what would that churchwarden have made of the man I saw sixty years ago trying to get the key into the door of his miserable cottage while concealing from this small boy the fact (actually quite unconcealable) that he was as drunk as a Lord? Why does this woman who abuses me by email and steals the fruits of my labors by reading and then not paying believe that the Lord's story would be more worth telling than the laborer's? Those shabby cottages were knocked down years ago--is every trace of the people who lived there to vanish?
Not if I have anything to do with it.

About the Author

John Lynch is an international salesman. He has lived and done business on every continent except Antarctica and knows Lagos, Jeddah and Abu Dhabi as well as the Shropshire countryside where he now lives. And yet, when he writes fiction he turns always to the northeast of England, the place he left when he was eighteen.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mandrill Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1910194034
• ISBN 13: 9781910194034
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 468