This is the second book in a series about Captain William Avery and his colleague, Jeremiah Blake. Earlier, we saw them in Calcutta, in a novel that painted a vivid picture of the British East India Company in its waning days about a decade before direct rule, the era known as the Raj. It is now a few years later in London in the early 1840's, and they are engaged by Lord Allington, a noted philanthropist, to conduct an inquiry into the suspicious deaths of two printers engaged in some 19th century pornography. The background to the inquiry is the struggle between the landed gentry, the nascent manufacturers, and the rural and urban poor. Britain had enacted some reforms in 1832, but they hardly deserved to be called democratic as still less than 1 in 20 men could vote.
In the capital, as opposed to the plains of India, Jemmy Blake appears more and more like Sherlock Holmes. He has an indulgent landlady, dresses haphazardly, has all sorts of street connections, can sort out any problem, is inclined to disguises, and a rather serious opium habit. Avery is not handy with his words, but he is quick with his fists in a rougher era in London, and is about as slow as Dr. Watson ever was. In the end, the murder mysteries are resolved in a manner I would best characterize as indifferent. The import takeaway is on the Chartist movement. They submitted 3.3 million signatures to Parliament in an attempt to expand suffrage. The toffs ignored them.
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