Synopsis
Investigating the death of a young girl whose body has been discovered in the Thames, blind eighteenth-century London judge Sir John Fielding and his sidekick Jeremy wonder about the girl's missing mother and follow clues to the racetrack, where they uncover a dangerous, high-stakes competition. 15,000 first printing.
Reviews
In Alexander's 10th enjoyable Sir John Fielding novel set in Georgian England (after 2002's An Experiment in Treason), the brilliant blind magistrate and his young apprentice Jeremy Proctor investigate the brutal murder of a little girl whose mother had sold her into slavery. The trail leads Jeremy into a new world, the racetrack, as he joins forces with the victim's uncle, legendary jockey Deuteronomy Plummer. The challenges of the inquiry mount, as crucial witnesses turn up dead and evidence suggests that a member of the upper class is involved. The assistance of Jeremy's almost-fiancee, Clarissa Roundtree, proves vital when her childhood friend Elizabeth Hooker disappears only to resurface after a melodramatic escape from a brothel-a subplot borrowed from a celebrated real-life unsolved mystery. As with other recent entries in this fine series, the once-dominant Sir John plays a largely supporting role. His sage advice and struggle to serve justice in a corrupt milieu guide his assistant's growth and maturation. This shift also mirrors a trend to underplay the whodunit aspect. Routine police procedure has largely supplanted Holmesian deductive pyrotechnics. Restoring the old balance by adding to Jeremy's sleuthing skills in future entries might win more classic mystery fans. FYI: The subplot, based on the unexplained disappearance of a young woman named Elizabeth Canning, takes center stage in Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair (1948) and is "solved" in Lillian De La Torre's Elizabeth Is Missing (1945). Arthur Machen's The Canning Wonder (1926) provides the definitive nonfiction account.
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Alexander's detective novels starring Sir John Fielding, the blind magistrate of Bow Street Court in mid-eighteenth-century London, may be the best historical mystery series around. Alexander's got it all: a heroic central figure, a setting that both fascinates and appalls, and a gift for concocting plots that weave in and out of social classes. Also, unlike many writers in this genre, who lay on historical details with a trowel, Alexander brings Georgian England alive with facts fitting the action. Alexander's detective is a real-life one: the younger half-brother of the novelist Henry Fielding, Sir John Fielding, who studied law and became chief magistrate after losing his sight at 19, relied on members of the Bow Street Runners as his eyes and ears. This fact-based device gives the novels a sort of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin feel, as Fielding's apprentice, Jeremy Proctor, scours London for the suspects Fielding later cross-examines. In the tenth Fielding adventure, the discovery of a seven-year-old girl's body in the Thames sends Proctor into the notorious Seven Dials district of London, where he seeks the girl's mother, only to discover that the gin-addicted mother was tricked into seling her daughter into child prostitution. More revelations of child abductions leading to child slavery follow, with suspense ratcheted up when the childhood friend of Jeremy's fiancee disappears. Marvelous. Connie Fletcher
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