This novel of crime and corruption in a lawless eighteenth-century London "captures the dark streets of the capital perfectly" (Richard Foreman).

Nearly a century before London would have a professional police force, "thief-taker" Balthazar Bloodwine can be hired privately to help rid the capital of the criminals that are as rife as the pox. He has the lean and hungry look of someone who lives by his wits and who trusts no one's judgment but his own.

But the boot is suddenly on the other foot for Bloodwine when he himself is "apprehended" one night by thugs in the service of one William Murray, the MP for Boroughbridge and solicitor general. Murray is convinced that a fellow member of parliament is mixed up in corruption related to a lucrative contract to transport convicts to America.

Murray gives the thief-taker a task: infiltrate and expose this powerful man. Now Bloodwine is caught between a rock and a hard place—with the noose waiting for him if he fails . . .