A historical thriller set in the Marshalsea debtors prison, and recommended by one of my favourite writers, was always going to be difficult to resist just a few weeks after finishing Little Dorrit.
As Antonia Hodgson points out in the introduction to her debut novel featuring adventurous rake Thomas Hawkins, this is not the Marshalsea that the fathers of both Dickens and Amy Dorrit inhabited. This is 1727 and the book is set in that prison´s eponymous Georgian predecessor, just a few hundred metres up the road in the Borough area of south London. A different location but the principle is the same: a man who cannot pay his debts is cast into the misery of the prison until he can resolve them. And that is where Thomas Hawkins finds himself when his luck finally runs out and his dissolute life of drinking and gambling catches up with him.
The most successful historical fiction I have read tends to have two things in common: a charismatic protagonist and the ability to bring its history to life. Hodgson has both in spades. We´ll come to Hawkins in a moment, because it is the Marshalsea itself that is at the heart of this book: the horror inflicted on the poor unfortunate by a cruel and unjust in a cold and bleak jail by brutal and corrupt officers of the state.
Hodgson´s Marshalsea has two halves. On one side, prisoners can pay for reasonable lodgings, can visit the tap room or coffee house and have access to basic amenities. On the commons side, inhabited by those of no resources, there is little but squalor and death in inhumane and overcrowded conditions. But prisoners on both sides are subject to the volatile and violent caprices of William Acton, a former butcher who rose up the ranks of the prison hierachy from turnkey to warden. Acton runs the jail for his own profit and every man and woman in the jail is at his mercy.
Through Hawkins´ eyes, Hodgson brilliantly conjures the day to day fear that all the prisoners in the Marshalsea live with. That the next day could easily be their last, that either the viciousness of the system, and if not that then the disease and poverty that is rife in the jail. You can see, smell, hear and even taste the decay and the danger. It is evocative, powerful and at times frightening.
Certainly Thomas Hawkins is frightened. He is something of an accidental hero. He wants little more than to be left alone with a bowl of punch and a game of cards, with the promise of a romantic tumble to follow. He is also, as such fellows often are, somewhat accident prone. And the life of rowdy peace he seeks is beyond his graps as a series of events that are largely out of his control first take his freedom and then threaten his life. The estranged son of a Suffolk cleric, Hawkins enters the Marshalsea with debts of twenty pounds and little prospect of paying them off, until the prison itself offers him a dangerous route out. His sense of honour as well as a short temper and limited judgement soon find him trouble.
But they also offer him a route out. Hawkins´ arrival follows the death, an apparent suicide, of a Captain Roberts whose ghost is said to haunt the prison and whose wife refuses to accept the verdict. Both are creating difficulties that prison authorities would like to see the back of and Hawkins is pressed into service to investigate the claims. If only he can stay alive long enough to solve the mystery, he might win his freedom.
The Devil in the Marshalsea is hugely enjoyable historical fiction: full of period detail but fast-paced; deftly plotted and evocatively told. It´s populated by entertaining and believable characters. It marks the start of a great series - books two and three, The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins and A Death at Fountains Abbey are just as good if not better - and we can only hope Antonia Hodgson is busy delivering more adventures.