Rogue

by Paul Fraser Collard Book 0.5 in the Jack Lark series.

First published 2014

Amazon

2.5(5)

London, before Jack Lark becomes a soldier. Growing up around his mother’s East End gin palace, Jack knows the alleys, rough company and hard bargains of the city better than he knows any respectable life. When an unexpected connection draws him into the glittering world of a masked ball, he sees how easily clothes, manners and confidence can open doors that birth has kept closed.

The story introduces the young Jack’s instinct for reinvention before the army gives it a more dangerous purpose. Victorian London’s sharp divisions of class, wealth and opportunity provide the setting for the first steps toward the impostor who will later move through battlefields under borrowed identities.