The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins
A Novel
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4.5 • 11 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A lively tale of “pitch-perfect suspense” set in eighteenth-century England—one of Publishers Weekly’s Top Ten Crime/Mystery Novels of the Year.
Winner of the CWA Historical Dagger Award
London, 1728. Tom Hawkins is headed to the gallows, accused of murder. Gentlemen don’t hang, and Tom will be damned if he’s the first—he is innocent, after all.
It’s hard to say when Tom’s troubles began. He was happily living in sin with his beloved—though their neighbors weren’t happy about that. He probably shouldn’t have told London’s great criminal mastermind that he was in need of adventure. Nor should he have joined the king’s mistress in her fight against her vindictive husband. And he definitely shouldn’t have trusted the calculating Queen Caroline. She’s promised him a royal pardon if he holds his tongue, but there’s nothing more silent than a hanged man. Now Tom’s scrambling to save his life and protect those he loves. But as the noose tightens, his time is running out.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in England in the early 18th century, Hodgson's sequel to 2014's The Devil in the Marshalsea is as good as her stellar debut, which won the CWA's Historical Dagger Award. A prologue depicts Thomas Hawkins, a gentleman who has spent time in debtors' prison, on his way to the gallows for murder, hoping against hope for a last-minute pardon. The main narrative charts the twisted path that led to Hawkins's desperate straits. He has been living with his lover, Kitty Sparks, in London, but Hawkins, who has found that he has a taste for danger, allies himself with James Fleet, "captain of the most powerful gang of thieves in St. Giles." Hawkins soon finds himself out of his depth when Fleet gives him an assignment that enmeshes him in royal intrigue. And things only get worse when a neighbor Hawkins threatened is stabbed to death. Hodgson maintains pitch-perfect suspense, craftily constructs a fairly clued whodunit, and convincingly evokes the period. This second novel by the editor-in-chief at Little, Brown U.K. solidifies her position as a major talent in the genre.
