The Last Days of Newgate: A gripping historical detective story set in the heart of old London

(Paperback)

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Description

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.

Reviews

A story of high intrigue and low politics, brutal murder and cunning conspiracies ... Tangy and rambunctious stuff--OBSERVER
Gripping and atmospheric--DAILY EXPRESS
Pyke is an intriguingly unfathomable character, and this is an excellent continuation of his dark journey--FINANCIAL TIMES
Pyke is violent, vengeful and conflicted in the best tradition of detectives. His story takes in grisly murder and torture, and uses 1800s London in the same way that hard-boiled fiction uses Los Angeles as a mirror of a corrupt society--TIME OUT
The novel drips with all the atmospheric detail of a pre-Victorian murder mystery - pea-soupers, dingy lanterns and laudanum--THE TIMES

Author Bio

Andrew Pepper is 36 and lives in Belfast where he is a lecturer in English at Queen's University. This is his first novel.