The Last Days of Newgate

New into paperback (TPB Sept 2006), THE LAST DAYS OF NEWGATE introduces readers to Pyke an ingenious, pragmatic and unforgettable hero.

It is a gripping, pacy and atmospheric story combining high intrigue and low politics, brutal murder and cunning conspiracies, set against the backdrop of 1820's London.

Fingersmith - Sarah Waters (Little Brown) meets Inspector Rebus.

St Giles, London, 1829: three people have been brutally murdered and the city simmers with anger and political unrest. Pyke, sometime Bow Street Runner, sometime crook, finds himself accidentally embroiled in the murder investigation but quickly realises that he has stumbled into something more sinister and far-reaching. In his pursuit of the murderer, Pyke ruffles the feathers of some powerful people, and, falsely accused of murder himself, he soon faces a death sentence, and the gallows of Old Bailey. Imprisoned, and with only his uncle and the headstrong, aristocratic daughter of his greatest enemy who believe in him, Pyke must engineer his escape, find the real killer and untangle the web of politics that has been spun around him. From the gutters of Seven Dials, to the cells of Newgate prison; from the turmoil of 1800s Belfast to the highest levels of murky, pre-Victorian politics, The Last Days of Newgate is a gripping, darkly atmospheric story with a fantastic, pragmatic - and reluctantly heroic - hero.