A Spectacle of Corruption(2004)

David Liss

Benjamin Weaver is awaiting death in Newgate gaol. Mysteriously convicted for a murder he didn’t commit by a judge determined to see him hang, he is suddenly—and equally mysteriously—offered the means to escape.

What, you may well ask, is going on? It’s a question Weaver asks of himself as he slinks out into the London night on a mission to clear his name. In doing so, he steps straight into a labyrinthine plot that weaves, like Benjamin, across eighteenth century London.

For the conspiracy against him is part of a grimmer and gaudier picture: one that encompasses double-dealings and dockworkers, the extorting of a priest—and a looming election with the potential to spark a revolution and topple the monarchy.

Handily, Weaver is a private investigator. He’s also an ex-pugilist, which is also a good thing when it comes to punching his weight in the ‘polite’ society of plotters and politicians, power-brokers, crime lords, assassins and spies. At the apex of which sits, rather precariously, a recent import from Hanover: the king.