GALLOWS THIEF

A washed-ashore Cape Codder for the past 20 years, Cornwell has published 18 Richard Sharpe British historicals about soldiering during the Napoleonic Wars (Sharpe’s Triumph, 2002), nearly a dozen of which have been seen on PBS. He now abandons Sharpe and embarks on a lively novel against capital punishment, set in England in the post–Napoleonic Wars period, known as the Regency, during which crop failures have undermined the lavishly wealthy style of London’s highborn. Indeed, when Rider Sandman, a hero back from Waterloo, finds that his family has gone bust, he must now support himself as an investigator for the Crown who looks into capital cases. During this particular period, the Crown hands out death sentences like playing cards, even for minor crimes by children. When the artist Charles Corday is accused of the rape and murder of a lady, Sandman has but a few days to find the real perp before Corday is hanged. His investigation takes him through strongly drawn fashionable and grimy levels of London, including an overstuffed Newgate Prison. And it is a trail that may prove fatal to Sandman himself. Does the title tell too much? Or will Sandman fail?

Standard Cornwell, this time with enough effluvial smells to make a bloodhound hold its breath.