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This book was first published in 1985. It is the first in a trilogy and Scholastic are republishing all three of them. The books in this trilogy should be read in order as they are all very closely linked.
The setting is the London of 1872. Sixteen year old Sally Lockhart is now an orphan after the man she believed her father died when a ship sank in the South China Sea. As if it is not bad enough being alone in the world she receives the following strange message,
"Sali beware of the seven blessings
Marchbanks will help
Chattum
Bware Darling."
Sally tries to find out what this message means. She goes to the office of her father's shipping agency and is taken to the company secretary. She asks him if the phrase the Seven Blessings means anything to him and he promptly falls down dead of a heart attack.
Sally has been left very little money - far less than expected, and she now knows she is in danger but her father has left her well prepared. She does not have the usual accomplishments of a Victorian young lady such as French or music, but she has a sound knowledge of bookeeping and the affairs of the stock market and she can shoot. From then on Sally finds herself involved in a series of strange and perilous events which culminate in a violent climax in the London docks after which Sally finally finds her father's legacy.
This story has a very Victorian feel about it. In some ways it is vaguely reminiscent of such writers as Wilkie Collins. There is the flashback to the Indian Mutiny when the ruby of the title first comes into the possession of Major Marchbanks, there is the opium trade and the terror of the Triads. The characters are not Victorian stereotypes but there are precedents for all of them. After leaving her catty and domineering second cousin Sally goes to live in the slightly bohemian household of the photographer Frederick Garland and his actress sister. They are joined by the former office boy Jim Taylor who is an avid reader of Stirring Tales for British Lads and who, consequently, knows all about the Triads.
The author says that Sally was more like a modern girl than a girl from Victorian times. I would dispute that because in the late nineteenth century women were beginning to challenge the position forced on them, although it was to be some time before their incipient efforts were to bear fruit. What I find much harder to accept is that Sally, when finding herself alone in a railway compartment with a strange and rather sinister man, falls asleep so allowing him to steal Major Marchbanks' precious journal. This is important for the development of the story but I do not believe that any woman would ever fall asleep under such circumstances.
One word of warning. The opium trade and opium dens play a very important part in this story and at one point Sally herself smokes opium to help her remember the events of her childhood. Many parents and teachers will have serious reservations about the prominence given to the drug opium in this book.
But apart from that, this book provides an exciting story with an authentic feel which also highlights the position of women in the nineteenth century.
Young adult.
This book was first published in 1986.
This is the second book in the trilogy about Sally Lockhart. It should be read after the Ruby in the Smoke. In a sense this trilogy is more one long book divided into three than a series.
Six years have passed since The Ruby in the Smoke. Sally is now a financial consultant. Frederick's photographic business has now expanded leaving him time to work also as a private detective.
Sally has a visit from a Miss Walsh. A few years ago Sally had advised Miss Walsh to invest in shipping. Miss Walsh had done so but the company she invested in had gone into liquidation and Miss Walsh had lost her money. She is now on the brink of poverty. Sally feels that it is all her fault. She also thinks that there is something strange about the whole business and she vows that she will get Miss Walsh's money back for her. To this end she enlists the help of photographer/detective Frederick. Two rather unexpected characters help to put them on the trail - a Scots conjuror and magician Mackinnon and a London medium Nellie Budd. This trail eventually leads to the north of England where a masterpiece of modern technology is being engineered by a man of evil.
There is fraud, violence and tragedy -- and even a Gretna Green wedding. There are also further insights into the position of women in Victorian England. Sally had studied at Cambridge University and had passed her exams but she was not allowed to take a degree.
I do, however, have one reservation. When Miss Walsh comes to her Sally admits that she did not know that Anglo Baltic had collapsed. If Sally is the competent financial adviser that we are led to believe then surely she should have known.
But this reservation apart this is a gripping Victorian detective story for teenagers.
Young adult.
This book was first published in 1991. It is the third in the Sally Lockhart trilogy. The first two books in the trilogy should be read first as this trilogy is something more of one long book divided onto three than a series.
At the beginning of the book all is well with Sally. She is living in a large, comfortable house with her Bohemian friends and good servants. Her financial consultancy continues to thrive and she is now enjoying the company of her two year old daughter Harriet. Then she suddenly finds that she is about to lose everything. This is all because she has a secret enemy who wants to destroy her completely -- and take her precious daughter away from her. How does this come about?
Sally is suddenly issued with a summons. She is being sued for divorce by an Arthur Parish. But Sally has never even heard of Arthur Parish. Sally has never been married. She was to have married Harriet's father Fred but he was killed in an accident. Sally does some detective work to prove that she was never married to Arthur Parish and then finds a false entry in a marriage register.
There is worse to come. It is claimed that Sally is an unsuitable mother. She is immoral and she is living with two unmarried men. Arthur Parish wants custody of Harriet.
The old lawyer who helped Sally so much in the past is now dead and Sally finds his successor unsympathetic and useless. The only people who could have helped her - Jim Taylor, Charles Betram and Uncle Webster - are in South America on a photography trip. Sally now finds how much the whole fabric of Victorian society is weighted against a woman on her own. She goes into hiding with Harriet. Arthur Parish closes her bank account as a wife's money belongs to her husband. He also claims that her financial consultancy was set up with his money which she had misappropiated. At her lowest point Sally ends up sleeping on a park bench.
Sally finds out that Parish is not working on his own. There is someone behind him. But how can Sally fight an enemy when she does not even know who that enemy is?
But there are other people interested in Parrish. Daniel Goldberg, an intrepid young journalist and socialist, is concerned because Jewish refugees fleeing from the oppressive regime in Russia, are being tricked and exploited. They are being sold fake steamship tickets, being made to pay for couriers who don't appear, and being forced to pay non existent taxes and transit charges. Even worse exploitation, prostitution and white slaving are also involved and someone is trying to stir up another pogrom in Russia. Goldberg knows that the real person responsible is the mysterious Tzaddik and that Parrish is his agent in London. Goldberg is interested in Sally because he knows that Parrish is trying to destroy her. Sally might be able to help him to discover the identity of the evil Tzaddik.
So Sally and Goldberg join forces and the book takes on another dimension. Sally stays for a time in a Jewish refuge and has her eyes opened to the poverty, deprivation and exploitation which is the lot of the majority of London's citizens.
In the last section of the book the tone of the story changes somewhat and the narrative romps through a kind of extended climax to the final resolution where all the loose ends are neatly tied up. Goldberg is able to call on both Jewish and Irish gangs. Harriet is kidnapped but rescued by these gangs after fights, fisticuffs and the use of unusual weapons - porcelain chamber-pots. Jim and Uncle Webster return from South America and a competent lawyer is found. Meanwhile Sally discovers the identity of the Tzaddik -- an old adversary from the first book in the trilogy "The Ruby in the Smoke" -- and finds herself with him in a flooded cellar while the whole building is collapsing around them.
"The Tiger in the Well" deals comphrehensively with such themes as poverty, capitalism and socialism, and anti-semiticism but I shall remember it for the stark picture it gives of the position of women in Victorian England and just how easy it was to use the law to destroy a woman completely.
Young adult
Mystery and adventure in Victorian London.
Joey has been brought up by two London costers -- Poll and Curly.
Joey knows that Curly is not his real father. Some of the other
boys call Joey James and say that he is the son of a toff -- but
Joey thinks that is nonsense.
When Joey is thirteen he has a row with the bad-tempered, hard-drinking
Curly. This results in Joey leaving home and setting up as a coster
himself. He borrows the money for some stock, and for his basket
-- or shallow -- and his new, independent life as a seller of
fruit and vegetables, begins. At first he sleeps in doss houses
but then he moves in with a gentle girl, Rose, and her young brother
and sister. With them all working together it is not too difficult
to pay the rent. The Rose suggests that Joey should learn to read
and he takes lessons from Quill Quennel, who has a stall in the
market place and writes letters for people. One day, when arriving
for his lesson, Joey finds that Quennel has a visitor, a Mrs Hailstone.
Joey has told Quennel that his name is James Rivers. When Quennel
tells Mrs Hailstone the name Joey has given him they both exchange
glances. Joey wonders if they know who his real father is. Quennel
lends Joey a book. While walking home Joey is stopped by a Peeler
who examines the book and asks Joey his name. After all Joey might
have stolen it. The next day Joey finds that Quennel has been
murdered.
Joey is convinced that the police will be sure that he is the
murderer. So he goes into hiding. But it is not just the police
he is hiding from. One of his friends, Lucky, had interrupted
the murderer. Later Lucky is found murdered too -- killed for
what he might know. Perhaps the real murderer believes that Lucky
has passed on some information to Joey too? So Joey is hiding
from both the police and the real murderer.
From this point on the pace is fast and furious. But this does
not stop a good deal of information about London life being introduced
into the story -- particularly about how the costers operated.
Over and above this we have many of the stock ingredients of a
story about Victorian London; the mudlarks, the dog stealers,
the opium trade.
But I feel that pace can be overdone. I would have preferred if
the story had been more leisurely with more detail. Admittedly
the plot is superbly crafted and all the characters which may,
at the beginning, appear to have only minor roles, later turn
out to be important for the final resolution. But I feel that
the eventual revelations are too succinct. A slower development
would have enabled all these final facts to stay better in the
reader's memory.
Even so this is an exciting mystery and adventure story which
exudes the atmosphere of Victorian London.
Teenage
Twelve-year-old Lucy Bellman has led a comfortable and sheltered life. She lives in a big house with her father (her mother is dead) and attends an expensive school.
Then her comfortable life comes to an abrupt end and she makes some unpleasant discoveries. Her father is addicted to gambling and has lost all his money. He loses the house and it is turned into a cheap lodging house. All the furniture and most of Lucy's possessions are sold and Lucy and her father are reduced to living in a tiny room in the attic. Lucy herself has to leave school and work as a drudge in her old home.
Even worse, the people who have taken over the house are criminals and Lucy finds herself being drawn into their activities with her life in constant danger. She is particularly afraid of the leader -- the evil and unbalanced Duke who has absolutely no compunction about killing anyone who gets in his way.
Then Lucy's father is accused of murder. What is Lucy to do? How can she prove his innocence? But Lucy has one good friend to help her. This is Tom who was taken from the workhouse by her father and who used to work in Mr Bellman's second hand clothes shop. Together they try to find out the truth about the murder and their efforts end in a thrilling climax in a run down house overlooking the Thames.
This is an exciting story with an authentic background. The poverty and squalour -- and the smells -- of the London of the poorer classes are vividly portrayed. In many ways this book is rather reminiscent of Dickens -- complete with a Dickensian happy ending.
Holds the interest.
Teenage