Gallows Thief [SEP] narrative location
Gallows Thief
Gallows Thief (2001) is a historical mystery novel by Bernard Cornwell set in London, England in the year 1817, which uses capital punishment as its backdrop.
Plot summary.
Rider Sandman, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, is hired as an investigator as a formality to rubber-stamp the death sentence of a condemned murderer. Instead, he discovers a conspiracy to conceal the real killer. In the slang of the time, a “gallows thief,” (also a “crap prig
passing reference to Sharpe is made in Cornwell's novel "Gallows Thief", when another Waterloo veteran mentions a "tall Rifle officer" who faced down the Imperial Guard.
- "Gallows Thief" also refers to one of "Waterloo"'s minor characters, a cavalry lieutenant named Witherspoon, killed in the opening hours of the battle. Witherspoon's cousin, another Witherspoon, appears in "Gallows Thief" as secretary to Lord Sidmouth, and mentions his cousin's death to Rider Sandman, the protagonist of the novel