The Devil’s Company

by David Liss Book 3 in the Benjamin Weaver series.

First published 2009

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4.0(4,082)

London, 1722. Benjamin Weaver is blackmailed by the secretive Jerome Cobb, who threatens Weaver’s friends and family unless he steals documents from the headquarters of the East India Company. The robbery becomes an enforced infiltration, placing Weaver among clerks, directors, guards and competing factions whose records conceal conflicts extending from London warehouses to overseas suppliers and rival European traders.

Weaver’s attempt to identify Cobb’s purpose exposes struggles over imported textiles, protection for British wool, Indian commercial interests and French espionage. The novel treats the Company not simply as a trading concern but as a private institution able to influence Parliament, labour and national policy, making corporate secrecy and divided loyalty as dangerous as the violence of London’s streets.