A review by primada
Gallows Thief by Bernard Cornwell

4.0

I would love to go back in time if I knew I could get back again to the present. Cornwell’s books are the perfect time machine that take you back – in this book to 1817 England, and give you a wonderful taste of the foods, the clothes, the smells, the social climate of the time. The book is an exciting and easy to read historical mystery but along the way, Cornwell takes a good look at capital punishment. The issues that Rider Sandman, the main protagonist, discovers in the book - of the cruelty of execution methods, the injustice of the poor getting the death penalty and the rich getting their off legally and still with us today in 2009.