cover image The Thieves' Opera: The Mesmerizing Story of Two-Notorious Criminals in Eighteenth-Century London

The Thieves' Opera: The Mesmerizing Story of Two-Notorious Criminals in Eighteenth-Century London

Lucy Moore. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $25 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-15-100364-8

For sheer decadence, no city, ancient or modern, rivaled 18th-century London. In its jumbled streets roamed predatory prostitutes, cunning thieves and street gangs who, for a lark, would chop off the noses of passersby. Moore debuts impressively with a vivid portrait of that city's most infamous villains: ""the famous house-breaker and gaol-breaker"" Jack Sheppard, and his arch-nemesis, Jonathan Wild, a self-appointed ""quasi-servant of the law."" Sheppard achieved pop-idol status both for the ""sense of humor"" he displayed in perpetrating his thefts and for his Houdini-like ability to escape whatever shackles the government slipped over his tiny wrists. Wild, meanwhile, was a moody, complex man, whose unofficial status as ""thief-taker general"" ingratiated him with the public as an uncannily successful retriever of stolen property. ""A past master of self-promotion,"" Wild hyped himself in the press, distracting the public and the government from his other role--as boss of London's underworld. Criminals who tried to elude his control ended up on the gallows; when Sheppard chafed at his authority, his fate, and ultimately Wild's, was sealed. Moore writes crisply and concretely in a highly accessible manner, but her many digressions prevent Wild and Sheppard from fully capturing readers' imaginations. In recounting Wild's public hanging in his nightshirt, for example, she expounds at length on the traditional costumes of the condemned. Even so, this is a strong bet for fans of Caleb Carr's fiction and of historical crime stories in general. Illustrated throughout with b&w period engravings by William Hogarth. (Aug.)