Freedom of the Mask

McCammon’s rousing sixth yarn featuring Matthew Corbett (after 2014’s The River of Souls) transports the early 18th-century American problem solver across the Atlantic to London, where he’s clapped into hellish Newgate Prison on murder charges. Matthew quickly becomes embroiled in mysteries involving fellow inmate Daniel Defoe; a gin-running street gang, the Black-Eyed Broodies; a kidnapped Italian opera singer; and a masked avenger named Albion, whose exploits are sensationalized (along with Matthew’s) in a penny dreadful broadsheet, the Pin—all the while with Matthew’s patron, Hudson Greathouse, and Matthew’s sweetheart, Berry Grigsby, in hot pursuit. McCammon’s intricate and intersecting subplots keep the story twisting unpredictably, and he adds menace to the mayhem with hellish descriptions of London straight out of a Hogarth engraving: all bawds and brutes a-wallow in the squalor of the city’s seamy street life. Fans of the series will race through this hefty page-turner to see where Matthew’s latest adventure leads him. [em]Agent: Cameron McClure, Donald Maass Literary Agency. (May) [/em]