The Thieves' Opera

Lucy Moore shows how Wild became London's unofficial "Thief-Taker General." Working under the auspices of London's lackadaisical officialdom, he made his career returning stolen goods to their proper owners for a fee; unknown to the victims, he negotiated directly with the robbers and often oversaw the original thefts. He discouraged competition, with punishments and reprisal that evoke contemporary Mob hits. On the other side of the coin is Sheppard, who lacked the ambition of Wild, but performed his crimes with a flair that in many cases robbed his victims of even the desire to hold a grudge against him.

Moore excels at supplying crucial illuminations of early-18th-century London street life with descriptions of coffee houses and public plazas so vivid you feel you've visited them. She emancipates the era from the quaint, manneristic drawing-room notions of ritualized emotions and unrequited love portrayed by modern-day "historical" fiction and film. Moore's London is filthy, chaotic, and hellish, a black den thick with thieves and "protected" by agents of law barely more scrupulous. With its large cast of cutpurses, highwaymen, footpads, prostitutes, and jailers (and jailed), The Thieves' Opera evokes more the Wild West of 19th-century America than it does refined British society. --Tjames Madison