The Carpetbagger - E-book - ePub

London, Summer 1882. A lad and a former fist-fighter are making a living mugging well-to-do types who visit the East End seeking pleasure. But this once profitable partnership develops a problem. Some three years earlier the lad had arrived in London homeless and penniless, fleeing domestic service in the North East of England. A chance meeting with a streetwise Russian with a liking for laudanum leads to an introduction to petty crime and a lifestyle involving not just fist-fighters but a fake army officer, socialists and a crooked pawnshop owner.
It is this last one, together with an Afrikaner, who drag the lad into a deadly plot. The story is narrated first-person with cheek and humour by the lad; fuelled on a mix of street-stall pies, print-shop tea and the hope that luck will always prevail.