Search Results for: ann featherstone

A hanging always draws a crowd. But not everyone there has come to jeer at the condemned man. George Kevill’s young son Barney is in the front row, and he knows his father is innocent. There are others there who know George is innocent, too – and the men who set him up have every reason to want to silence his boy . . .

Narrowly escaping the clutches of the sinister Nasty Man, young Barney finds sanctuary at the London Aquarium amongst his father’s bohemian friends: Bob Chapman, whose performing dogs Brutus and Nero astonish audiences every night, the exquisite doll-lady, Princess Tiny, and her admirer, the giant Herr Swann. Together with Fortinbras Horatio Trimmer, aspiring novelist and meantime author of penny dreadfuls and popular plays, they will protect Barney and seek to uncover the conspiracy behind a dark secret that lies at the heart of the Victorian establishment.

To ‘walk in Pimlico’ is, according to the Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang, the colloquial expression ‘to be handsomely dressed’.

Comedian, clog dancer, comic vocalist, actor and all-round funny fellow Corney Sage is treading the boards at the Constellation in Whitechapel when he stumbles across the body of an actress outside the theatre and catches sight of the killer as he escapes. Corney was not the only witness. Fellow actress Lucy Strong also saw what happened and when the murderer returns to the scene of the crime that same night, both fear for their lives.

Corney and Lucy flee London separately, keeping in touch with each other through a series of advertisements in the trade paper, the Era. Certain they have escaped the same fate as Bessie, they settle into their new lives away from London. But the murderer – a master of disguise – is slowly closing in on them and it is only a matter of time before he pounces . . .

From the drawing rooms of polite society to the back rooms of brothels, through music halls, circus rings and freak shows, Ann Featherstone brilliantly reconstructs 19th century England in this gripping psychological thriller.