Soot

by Andrew Martin

First published 2017

Amazon

3.4(908)

York, 1799. A celebrated silhouette artist is murdered, leaving behind a set of recent portraits that may include the face of his killer. Fletcher Rigge, confined in a debtors’ prison, is offered a temporary escape and the possibility of freedom if he can identify the murderer before his allotted time runs out.

Rigge moves through Georgian York following the surviving silhouettes and questioning the people they represent, knowing that failure will return him to prison. The investigation exposes debts, social pretence and the vulnerability of people living under a harsh criminal and financial system. Martin turns the period’s fashionable cut-paper portraits into evidence in a mystery shaped by the city’s streets, prisons and unequal forms of justice.