A Grave For a Thief

Douglas Skelton

(Canelo, £18.99)

Despite originally hailing from Edinburgh, Skelton’s compelling anti-hero Jonas Flynt seems perfectly adapted for life in the pungent, perilous streets of London in the early 18th Century, where a man must always have his wits about him. Brooding in taverns, pining alternately for his current doxy and the girl back home, he emerges from the shadows garbed in puritan black, brandishing twin pistols and a sword-cane, to enact justice.

Flynt, for various reasons, never quite found his place in the world. He’s a criminal burdened with a conscience, a soft heart and an egalitarian streak out of step with his times. His army days soured him on the whole idea of war, and of the ruling classes using the poor to fight their battles, so he became a highwayman, where his skills as a marksman, fighter and quick thinker came into their own. But his criminal career was cut short by his old commanding officer, Colonel Charters, who by then was running a top-secret intelligence organisation called the Company of Rogues and pressured Flynt into joining it, or else be hanged for highway robbery.

He’s undertaken secret missions for Charters in two previous books, and it’s been a journey of self-discovery for him too. He now knows for sure that he is the son of his old arch-enemy Lord Moncrieff, whose rape of his mother eventually drove her to suicide. Moncrieff is dead now, but his son has inherited the title, along with his membership of the shadowy elite society known as the Fellowship, and has concocted a plan to kill his half-brother Jonas, a scheme so convoluted that even the assassin charged with carrying it out thinks it’s slightly on the bonkers side.

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Flynt’s latest mission is to locate lawyer Christopher Templeton, a disillusioned Fellowship member who may be persuaded to come over to their side and provide useful information. Templeton has gone missing, presumably kidnapped to keep him quiet, and the first half of the novel is an episodic journey through London’s cramped alleyways, smokey taverns and darkened stairwells, in which Flynt has a series of encounters with low-lives, lawyers, prostitutes, grumpy landlords, self-appointed Thieftakers, a sword-fighting instructor whose sister has disappeared along with Templeton and even Sir Isaac Newton, gathering information about his quarry at each stop.

Much of the book’s first half feels constricted by its episodic structure, as one clue leads Flynt only to another, the proceedings enlivened by a tense standoff with two pistol-packing goons. But once he crosses the city’s boundaries on his way north, leaving the claustrophobic surroundings of the capital behind him, the mood of the narrative changes, gathering pace and gaining momentum. Presently, his destination of Gallowmire draws near. Gallowmire, with a scaffold permanently erected on the village green, a place so sinister that it feels as though Skelton might be making an unexpected swerve into folk-horror.

If there’s a stumbling block to fully enjoying this pacey, atmospheric thriller it’s that, in a bid to impart an authentic 18th Century flavour, Skelton has saddled his characters with an ornate, florid way of speaking that makes even the most casual, spontaneous exchange sound diligently composed and rehearsed.

Three books in, and Flynt’s own tormented personal history is the driving force behind both plot and character here, rather than any threats the Fellowship might pose to national security. Skelton augments that with satisfying storytelling, high stakes and the possibility that there will be quite a few bodies, of both major players and innocent bystanders, littering the streets of Gallowmire before it’s done.