Bookshops of Note

BOOKSHOPS OF NOTE

Just back from signing a few copies of A Most Dangerous Woman, second signing of the week, and it occurs to me that I should really give a big vote of thanks to two bookshops who've supported my work over the last few years. First is Heffers in Cambridge, whose Richard Reynolds organises the annual "Bodies in the Bookshop" get-together and sundry other "criminal" events, and the second is the signed first-edition specialists Goldsboro Books, run by Dave and Daniel, situated in the bookselling alley that is Cecil Court (which coincidentally, honestly, is the location for a seedy book-selling racket in the my first novel, London Dust ... !). Both shops are marvellous and visitors in Cambridge and London respectively should seek them out.

A Most Dangerous Woman

Publication week for my fifth novel ... The book is called "A Most Dangerous Woman", and introduces Sarah Tanner, a "lady detective" (of sorts) who will appear in an ongoing series, set in 1850s London. For more about the book, see here.

The Physiology of London

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF LONDON

A selection of quotes from John Fisher Murray's The Physiology of London in Bentley's Miscellany, 1844, have been added to the web site. Includes comments on angling ("On a fine, warm day in September, we have counted in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, no less than two hundred and eighty-four anglers, large, small, and intermediate, including gentlemen, chimney-sweepers, military officers, blackguard boys, in short, every gradation of the indefinitely graduated scale of metropolitan social life, was here represented"), child poverty ("I have seen little children, fat enough for the spit, wrapped in woolpacks of fleecy hosiery, seated in their little carriages, drawn by goats, careering over the sward of Hyde Park; and at the same moment, crawling from the hollow trunks of old trees, where they had found refuge for the night, other children, their nakedness hardly concealed by a few greasy rags flapping against the mottled limbs of the creatures, heirs of shame and sorrow, and heritors of misery and its necessary crime." --- goats? was this a commonplace sight!?), a visceral description of the jobbing knacker ("The pole-axe is driven at one blow through the frontal bone of the expiring animal ;a willow wand, finger thick, is pushed into the hole, and twisted about in the brain pan with great dexterity ; the animal is fearfully convulsed, writhing in the most intense agony - the mob is quite in raptures at every kick of one brute and twist of the other - fainter and fainter become the death struggles of Dobbin - another turn or two, as a finisher - he is dead.") and various others (see Bibliography under "Bentley's Miscellany" in Journals).

More Cartes de Visites

MORE CARTES DE VISITES ...

Further to my earlier post, Ken Page has generously donated a few more excellent cartes de visite to the site ... enjoy!