Jack, Knave and Fool (Sir John Fielding Series #5)

by Bruce Alexander

Overview

In this fifth Sir John Fielding mystery, the legendary eighteenth-century London judge takes on his most difficult case to date. John Fielding was famous not only as cofounder of London's first police force, the Bow Street Runners, but also as a magistrate of keen intellect, fairness and uncommon detective ability. What made this all the more remarkable was that he was blind. Now the blind magistrate and his young assistant and ward, Jeremy Proctor, face a baffling pair of deaths. A lord dies suddenly while attending a concert. A disembodied head washes up on the banks of the Thames. While investigating both, Sir John and Jeremy learn more than they ever cared to about family, greed, deception, and the peculiar nature of homicide, high and low.

"This is a wonderful series . . . In addition to giving us a marvelous parade of Georgian-era high and low characters in the London of Johnson and Boswell, it is packed with history and lore, and it's altogether much fun."—Washington Post Book World

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780425171202
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/01/1999
Series:	Sir John Fielding Series , #5
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	671,559
Product dimensions:	4.16(w) x 6.67(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Bruce Alexander is the pseudonym for a well-known author of fiction and nonfiction. The books in his series include Blind Justice; Murder in Grub Street (named by the New York Times Book Review as a notable book in 1995); Watery Grave; Person or Persons Unknown (named by the Chicago Tribune as one of the best novels of 1997); Jack, Knave and Fool; and Death of a Colonial.

Editorial Reviews

. . .[W]hen all the miscreants have been rounded up, we can only marvel at Sir John's wise methods of dispensing justice in such an unruly society. —The New York Times Book Review

Marilyn Stasio

Sir John Fielding returns in Alexander's entertaining fifth fictionalized case for the real-life 18th-century English magistrate known as Blind Beak. A master of character and plot, Alexander also captures the sounds, smells and social undercurrents of 1770s London. While attending an evening's entertainment, the blind Sir John, his wife, Katherine, his young 'amanuensis,' Jeremy Proctor (who narrates this series), and Annie, the family's 16-year-old cook, witness the death of elderly Lord Laningham. Although the death is ascribed to natural causes, Sir John suspects poison. Lady Laningham, who delays heeding his call for an autopsy, is herself soon poisoned, casting suspicion on the Laningham heir, Arthur Paltrow. The discovery of a severed head in the Thames engages Jeremy and his friend Jimmie Bunkins in a case involving a ne'er-do-well carpenter, who had come up before Fielding on a charge of public drunkenness, and the missing owner of a pawn shop. For Jeremy, the headstrong daughter of the carpenter provides added aggravation when, suffering from pneumonia, she appropriates his bedroom. Alexander increases Jeremy's role while somewhat reducing Sir John's in this tale, at the conclusion of which the two plot lines convincingly mesh.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The latest addition to a colorful and rambunctious series (e.g., Person or Persons Unknown, LJ 8/97) follows blind Bow Street magistrate Sir John Fielding and his teenaged assistant/prot g Jeremy Proctor as they pursue several cases. The first concerns possible murder: the elderly Lord Laningham falls dead after drinking certain spirits, as does his wife a week later. Other cases include a wily escapee with a saucy daughter and an attempt to determine the identity of a decapitated head. This detailed, lively, and realistic re-creation of 18th-century London, crowded with fully fleshed characters, belongs in every mystery collection.

Library Journal

. . .[W]hen all the miscreants have been rounded up, we can only marvel at Sir John's wise methods of dispensing justice in such an unruly society. -- The New York Times Book Review

Marilyn Stasio

There's no escaping sudden death no matter which end of the social spectrum you occupy in 1771 London. On their second (!) visit to a decapitated head found floating in the Thames, Jeremy Proctor's friend Jimmie Bunkins thinks he recognizes it as that of George Bradbury, a receiver of stolen goods with ties to the lowest lowlifes London can offer. By this time, Jeremy, together with his master, blind Bow Street magistrate Sir John Fielding, has already been present for an even more unnerving spectacle when the foolish old Earl of Laningham, patron of the Academy of Ancient Music, interrupts a Handel concert first by waving his arms and beating time to the music, then by falling down dead. Poison, suspects sharp-eared Sir John (Person or Persons Unknown). But when he voices his suspicions to Lady Laningham, she delays acting until she's dead too, and even then, an incompetent new coroner refuses to disturb the internal organs of a couple so noble for an unseemly autopsy. Are the two cases connected? They are not; but as separate courses, alternately sampled, they still provide plenty of excitement for young Jeremy—who'll spend much of his time quarreling with a girl who insists against all the evidence that her father couldn't have been mixed up in the beheading—and plenty of sidelights, both earthy and urbane, on the 18th-century milieu. As for the two mysteries—one rather unoriginal, the other left hanging in a surprisingly anticlimactic way—they're no more than the key to Alexander's magical world.

Kirkus Reviews