Rapscallion

Starred review from March 25, 2013
London Bow Street Runner Matthew Hawkwood lands an extremely dangerous undercover assignment in McGee’s excellent third Regency crime thriller (after 2012’s Resurrectionist). The Home Secretary has asked Bow Street to assist the Admiralty, whose Transport Board administers foreign prisoners of war. Recent board efforts to investigate an alarming increase in the number of escapes of French prisoners have resulted in the drowning of one British naval officer and the disappearance of another. Posing as an American who was captured in Spain while attached to one of Bonaparte’s regiments, Hawkwood enters the new prison in Maidstone, a holding pen for prisoners before their transfer to the Thames and Medway “hulks” (i.e., prison ships). The rip-roaring plot compares favorably to Robert Louis Stevenson, while the evocative details of life aboard ship call to mind Patrick O’Brian. Agent: Jennifer Weltz, Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency.