The Devil in the Marshalsea - Antonia Hodgson.epub

In 1727, seven years after the bursting of the South Sea Bubble, 25-year-old Tom Hawkins, the ne'er-do-well son of a clergyman, finds himself imprisoned alongside hundreds of others. Conditions are relatively comfortable – just as long as Tom can find a way to keep paying the jailers who are intent on squeezing every last penny out of their captives. Once the money runs out, he will be consigned to the fetid and teeming "Common Side" until starvation or disease finishes him off. However, a man was murdered in the prison a few months before his arrival, and Tom is offered his freedom if he can unmask the killer. Impeccably researched and astonishingly atmospheric, with time past evoked so strongly that one can almost smell it, this is a truly spellbinding tale.