Book Review: Gallows Thief - Bernard Cornwell

Bernard Cornwell easily slots into my Top Five list of favourite authors – along with, in no particular order, Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, Jeff Shaara and James Holland – but this is the first book of his I’ve read that hasn’t involved a conflict featuring muskets and cannonballs. I’ve devoured the Sharpe series (Napoleonic Wars), loved every second of the Starbuck Chronicles (American Civil War) and didn’t mind the standalone novel Redcoat (American Revolution) either.

Enter, Gallows Thief, which I got for Christmas a few years back and gathered dust on my shelf until, wanting something a little different but still fairly familiar, I reached for it last week, and, like with those other great Cornwell tales, loved every second of it.

Rider Sandman, Cornwell’s main character, is a former Army captain, who served in the Spain and Portugal before distinguishing himself at the Battle of Waterloo, but, two years after Napoleon’s final defeat and exile, Sandman finds himself penniless and his family’s name has been disgraced, thanks to the questionable actions of his late father. What little money he earns goes to his mother and sister.

When Sandman is offered the job of a government investigator to discover whether a man condemned to death by hanging for the murder of a woman is actually guilty and deserved of his punishment, he takes it, and finds himself stepping into a world of corruption and shadiness, dealing with secret gentlemen’s clubs and tangled conspiracies whilst trying to salvage his engagement, which, due to his family’s disgrace, he was forced to break off, a situation that has made him less than positive about life, and worried about rumours that his former fiancé might have found a new man to marry.

There’s enough mentions and recollections of Sandman’s days fighting Napoleon’s armies that you can’t help but think back to Richard Sharpe’s exploits on those same battlefields – and there are a few names that tie Sandman’s world into the continuity Cornwell built around his famous rifleman, just as the author inserted French cavalry officer Colonel Lassan, Sharpe’s son with Lucille, into the Starbuck Chronicles first as a Northern observer then a sometime-rider with the Confederacy.

The end of the book is satisfying, and comes quickly enough, with a twist that I didn’t see coming, and although you don’t actually read about how Sandman’s life turns itself around, you’re left with the distinct impression that the captain will be just fine.

Cornwell has so much on his writing plate, but I hope he has a chance to write another Rider Sandman adventure because the first one was great!