The Thief Taker's Christmas: A Filigree of Gold.
By P.B. Phillips
‘Filigree of Gold’ - Slow burn lightly spiced cozy-adjacent historical novel:
With Christmas A.D. 1696 approaching, the light of the season is turned to darkness; if the new lovers Kit and Rebecca cannot find the truth behind a mysterious crime, it will be Kit’s head in a Tyburn noose.
Back Cover:
Christmas A.D. 1696 was approaching, even the foul mud of London’s roads froze overnight. Kit Pascoe is the city’s only professional thief taker, an unwilling policeman, in a time before an official police force. Kit knows he needs the work provided by the deeply corrupt Deputy Governor of Newgate Prison, Jonathan Wild. In an attempt to get out from under Wild’s heel, Kit brokers a meeting between his paymaster and the irrepressible rogue Edgeworth Bess.
Remote from the wintry drizzle, comfortably seated in Rebecca Scott’s aroma-rich tea house, Bess and Wild come to an uneasy bargain. With this one deal Kit could finally earn enough money to buy back his mother’s mill.
However, returning from a golden-eyed evening with Rebecca, Kit makes a devastating discovery. The implications of that night drag the new couple into an underworld of killers, thieves, and traitors. As Kit and Rebecca’s relationship deepens, so does Bess’s scheming.
Unexpected visitors, secrets of a murderous Dutch Catholic plot, memories of a forgotten curio from Rebecca’s childhood, force the lovers to consider making uneasy alliances. Kit and Rebecca, his Blessed She of We, will need to balance doing good against being good, if they are to keep Kit’s head out of a Tyburn noose.
Prologue
I had resolved, in the Year of Our Lord 1696, to work the bounty payments in the City of London. I found what I expected to see: ugliness beyond description and corruption beyond salvation.
I was there for one reason only; I reckoned that with two good years’ work I could finally return home to Exeter with enough money to buy back my mill. However, from the moment I arrived at Newgate Prison as a catcher of thieves, my life utterly changed.
In London, every street, coffee house and inn seemed to be populated with greed, corruption and avarice. Those first months I ate alone, drank alone and ever awoke alone. I believed I was my work; and that alone. Until, recovering from a beating, I met the love of my life.
The fates tried and continue to try, everything and anything to keep us apart.
I have never loved someone as I love and will always love, the She of We.
Everyone else; everything else; is just straw and water
John Solus/Christopher Pascoe.
Written in January 1724.
A Filigree of Gold.
The Winter of 1696 –1697.