The Revenge Of Captain Paine: From the author of The Last Days of Newgate
By (Author) Andrew Pepper
Orion Publishing Co
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
1st August 2008
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
823.92
Paperback
544
Width 199mm, Height 133mm, Spine 35mm
430g
It is 1835, and with the birth of the Industrial Revolution, railway fever sweeps the country. Pyke is uneasy with the luxury his aristocratic marriage has brought him, and when he is unofficially asked to investigate a decapitation, he can not resist the chance to resuscitate the old skills he learned on the streets.
But with the industrial world comes a new and faceless enemy: men who have money and power, and who will stop at nothing in their pursuit of both. For Pyke, with his young wife and child and an elevated place in society to protect, the stakes have suddenly become alarmingly high.From the sweat shops of the east end to the palace of the Queen-in-waiting; from the elegant drawing rooms of the newly rich, to the blood-spattered backrooms of London's taverns, Pyke's investigation stirs up a hornets' nest of trouble. As the death toll rises, an alluring woman from his past returns, Pyke must draw on all of his resources if he is to protect his family, and survive.'A story of high intrigue and low politics, brutal murder and cunning conspiracies ... tangy and rambunctious stuff' [OBSERVER]
'Drips with all the atmospheric detail of a pre-Victorian murder mystery - "pea-soupers", dingy lanterns and laudanum' [THE TIMES]'Gripping and atmospheric' [DAILY EXPRESS]'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]'Well researched and enjoyably disturbing ... likely to leave the reader clamouring for more' [TLS]Andrew Pepper lives in Belfast where he is a lecturer in English at Queen's University.