A THIEF’S JUSTICE

Douglas Skelton

(Canelo, £16.99)

In 1716, London is in the grip of a biting winter that has frozen the Thames solid. Still, however cold it gets, there’s drinking, gambling, whoring and plotting to be done, and Jonas Flynt is always to be found somewhere on its periphery, never far from trouble.

Flynt, a Scot by birth, was introduced in this novel’s predecessor, An Honourable Thief, last year. His reputation as a man of strong character and principle tends to precede him, even if people are a little unclear on which side of the law he actually stands. A cynical former soldier with little respect for his betters, he was hauled out of a highwayman’s life by the officer he saved on the battlefield, Nathaniel Charters, and recruited into Charters’ top-secret brigade, The Company of Rogues. The shadowy Flynt now carries out missions for the state, his pistols Tact and Diplomacy tucked into his belt and a sword-stick at his side.

Flynt is a loner, and he broods. He broods about his first love and their child back in Edinburgh, about the recent revelation of his true parentage and about the courtesan Belle, to whom he would surrender his heart if his dangerous, solitary lifestyle allowed for the possibility of marriage.

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A Thief’s Justice opens two months after the events of An Honourable Thief with Flynt coming to the rescue of the amiable Judge Dumont, from whom the unscrupulous aristocrat Lord Fairgreave is trying to steal back the money he lost at the gambling tables. Days later, the judge is found dead – murdered, allegedly, by a male sex-worker. Belle is convinced that the young lad is innocent, and begs Flynt to help save him from the gallows.

Flynt can’t refuse a request from Belle, but he’s already busy keeping an eye on the loathsome Lord Fairgreave, who may be involved in a plot to spring a prominent Jacobite from the Tower of London and spirit him out of the country. Flynt’s position is complicated by the possibility that, the deeper he investigates, the more likely he is to become embroiled in the plot himself.

The pleasure Skelton takes in recreating the atmosphere of 18th Century London is almost palpable. As Flynt makes his way through this “home to a motley of bawds, coiners, dippers and assorted rogues”, every tavern, brothel and gambling den he visits – invariably reached by a maze of dark and filthy back streets – adds to the sense of a city humming with life and danger. The dialogue, liberally seasoned with archaic terms uncovered by Skelton’s research, and the inclusion of curiosities like “cleyms” (fake sores applied to the face to gain sympathy), give it even more period texture.

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In this city of extreme deprivation and great wealth, there are a few at both ends of the social spectrum who want to do the right thing, and Flynt attracts them like a lightning rod. But with aggrieved aristocrats, self-serving politicians, Jacobite plotters, the corrupt law enforcers known as “thieftakers” and sundry unsavoury toughs all ranged against him, the odds are definitely not even.

The second book in the Company of Rogues series makes a great, immersive, action-packed historical thriller with intrigue in the air and threats around every corner. Skelton can be justly proud of his protagonist, a dark, compelling anti-hero who has grown weary of his lifestyle, “increasingly sickened” by the ease with which can take lives and, in Belle’s words, uses “solitude as a fortress to keep the world at bay”; but who nevertheless keeps finding goodness and decency flourishing in the most unpromising places.