Oswald the Thief

by Jeri Westerson

First published 2022

Amazon

4.1(193)

London, 1308. Oswald of Harlech is a Welsh tinker whose real talents include burglary, purse-cutting, rigged games and surviving the consequences of his own schemes. When he is caught robbing a house, the Keeper of the King’s Wardrobe gives him an alternative to punishment: steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. Oswald assembles an improbable crew of lock-pickers, landlords, an alchemist, an alehouse owner and a taciturn blacksmith, turning what should be an impossible royal theft into a medieval caper in which every participant has a different reason to betray the plan.

The novel is set at the beginning of Edward II’s reign, when the royal household, wardrobe and treasury were not abstract bureaucracies but networks of officers responsible for the king’s possessions, expenditure and movement. London’s gates, wards, markets and prisons make the city itself part of the heist. Westerson treats the period with comic energy rather than courtly solemnity, using a criminal protagonist to show the capital from below while the Crown Jewels provide a direct connection between street crime and royal power.