#Blogtour - The Betrayal of Thomas True by A J West

The Betrayal of Thomas True
A J West
Orenda Books, 4 July 2024
Available as: HB, 301pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781916788152

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda for sending me a copy of The Betrayal of Thomas True to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

The Betrayal of Thomas True is a novel about growth, about recognising and becoming what one was meant to be, and about about loyalty. It is also a novel about betrayal, about prejudice and about persecution.

Above all, it is a novel about love.

Though the book is set in the roiling metropolis of early 18th century London, the precise date that this story takes place is kept vague. However, while St Paul's Cathedral is nearly complete (so some decades after the Great Fire), Sir Christopher Wren is still alive, so the action takes place before 1723. It's early enough though to pick up something of the brimstone of Restoration drama, opening as young Thomas arrives in London on the stagecoach, fleeing staid and respectable Highgate for a life of passion. Convention would dictate the naive young country boy suffering all manner of indignity at the hands of worldly Londoners, and in a way he does, beginning with his grasping aunt and uncle demand 6 months' rent for a decaying attic room on London Bridge. But hold. Master Thomas isn't some lost innocent. Alive to who he meets and what they hint, he comes to the city with a purpose, and soon seeks out the molly houses, and in particular, the most notorious of them all, Clap's. There he can be Verity True-tongue, taking a woman's gown and mingling with others - some respectable and wealthy, others less so - who must also conceal their true natures from friends, family and neighbours.

It is a fraught and dangerous double life, for, among the ranks of the mollies is a rat, selling them out to their persecutors...

I loved the sheer joy of this book, the teeming life of London depicted in all its variety, its glory and grossness. This is the London of Jonathan Wilde, of thief-takers, cutpurses, Bedlam, Newgate and the Tyburn jig. It's a London impossible to police, a place of rookeries and hidden houses of resort, of double identities and split loyalties. Remember, civil war and religious differences are only a generation back, with the Crown and the faith still dubiously founded. London is a town of spies, full of those on the make and those daring to live fully after decades of turmoil. And it's full of the self-righteous, those who are terrified that somebody, somewhere, might be enjoying themself. All's a perfomance - respectability or defiance - on the widest stage in the world, as True Thomas takes his place.

Against that setting, The Betrayal of Thomas True is a thriller of sorts, following Gabriel Griffin ("Lotty Lump" is his Molly name), the guard of Mother Clap's, as he pursues the rat. Mollies are being murdered, and only one of a few can be to blame. Consumed by grief at the loss of his wife and baby three years before, Gabriel stalks his quarry. Meanwhile, a pair of wandering justices, Myre and Grimp, approach London, consumed with their own plans and plots and determined to feed the Tyburn tree. This pair - who at first seem like the comic relief from a Shakespeare play, a Shallow and Simple, perhaps - grow steadily more disturbing as their true natures and motivation are revealed.

It's a complex story where appearances deceive and no-one can be trusted. Division among the mollies will be fatal, and yet bodies pile up provoking suspicion and recrimination. Their motto, "Always together", begins to seem hollow yet as we will see, it can bear several meanings.

Building to a tremendous conclusion asking vital questions about authenticity, solidarity and the nature of love,  The Betrayal of Thomas True reveals a London at once both utterly alien and rather familiar. It's the story that might have been written between chapters of Joseph Andrews or Tom Jones - both obvious (yes, of course this is what was going on on the other side of the page) and deeply revealing.

A great read and a book I'd strongly recommend.

For more information about The Betrayal of Thomas True, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy The Betrayal of Thomas True from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.