While I got my love of reading from my dad, what I didn’t get from him was a caviler attitude about how to treat my books. I’m a little OCD – my books look pristine, even after I’ve read them, and when I lend them out, I expect them to come back that way. Just ask my friend Rachel – she took one look at my face when she returned a book, and immediately offered to replace it and, in retrospect, it was barely dented (PS, I’m not a monster – I wouldn’t let her buy me a new one). My dad, however, will throw books in pockets and bags, will crack spines and use books as coasters, and seems to think that as long as the text is legible, it doesn’t matter that the book looks like. I didn’t know this about him until I lent him a paperback, and then had to drop hints for a month about the condition he returned it in, at which point he replaced it. And vowed not to borrow any more of my books. He broke his own rules when I offered to lend him my latest read, Gallows Thief, by one of his favourite authors, Bernard Cornwell.
Gallows Thief is the story of Rider Sandman, a former officer in the British army who, after the Peninsular Wars, sold out his commission in order to pay off the debts his father had accrued during his lifetime. A renowned cricketer, living on the cheep in London in order to continue paying off his father’s debts and support his mother and sister, Rider is looking for ways to make a living and, hopefully, reclaim the hand of the woman he loves (when it came out that he was financially ruined, the girl’s parents wouldn’t let them marry). This book, however, begins with a murder – the wife of an aristocrat is murdered and the person accused of committing the crime is the young apprentice painter who was at her home at the time to paint her portrait. Rider gets involved with the story when the Home Secretary asks him to ensure that the right man has been found guilty of the crime in advance of his hanging (hence, making Rider the one trying to steal him from his fate on the gallows).
As always, Cornwell’s book is well researched and well written. There are two aspects of 19th century British life that give colour to this book; the first is cricket – the reader is given an overview of what cricket meant to the sports fans and gamblers of the age, and the second is capital punishment in Britain at the time. It’s the second that provides the most dynamism to the book. Cornwell provides his readers with the contemporary points of view of those for and those against the use of capital punishment (which, both vary and are at the same time similar to today’s arguments), as well as an explanation of how the process worked in London London
What I really enjoyed about this book was the characters. Rider Sandman is an upstanding young man facing a terrible situation, but he still holds onto his honour. But he’s no choir boy – in fact, he has a temper that’s bad enough to scare even the most burly of street thugs. The juxtaposition of the man’s character between extreme good and frighteningly bad makes for a great dynamic in a main character. I would think that Sandman could easily be given a series of his own, and hope that Cornwell will do so in the future. As for the secondary characters, all of them are equally well written and bring their own dynamics to bear on the story – there are no extra characters to cloud the story or weaken the plot, and I think that can be attributed to Cornwell’s own experience as a prolific author.
So, final verdict? I’d say read this book. You don’t have to have a lot of knowledge about the period before you go into it, as Cornwell provides you with all the background and information you’d need to make the plot relatable. Even my dad couldn’t resist borrowing it once he read the summary on the back of the book because it has a great story and was written by an author who knows what he’s doing. (It also helped that my copy of the book was used, so I assured Dad he didn’t have to return it in pristine order.)
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