{"id":3937,"date":"2021-02-01T06:08:24","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T14:08:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3937"},"modified":"2021-02-01T06:08:24","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T14:08:24","slug":"susanna-calkins-the-sign-of-the-gallows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/susanna-calkins-the-sign-of-the-gallows\/","title":{"rendered":"Susanna Calkins: The Sign of the Gallows"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I love this series set in 1660\u2019s London, featuring former maid turned bookseller Lucy Campion.\u00a0 London has weathered both the plague and the great fire, and the upheaval finds some women able to take work usually reserved for men.\u00a0 While Lucy is not technically a bookseller\u2019s apprentice, she does everything an apprentice would do.\u00a0 In the 1660\u2019s, bookselling also meant publishing, so Lucy works as a typesetter, a sometime writer of murder broadsheets, which were often sold at public executions, as well as working as a seller.\u00a0 Her intelligence and connections to the wealthy Hargreaves family, her former employer, get her into some places the police cannot go. She\u2019s also torn between two suitors \u2013 Constable Duncan and Adam Hargreaves.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the background of the stories, and you need not have read the other books in the series to enjoy this one, as Calkins is an excellent storyteller and draws the reader into Lucy\u2019s world effortlessly.\u00a0 The book opens at a crossroads \u2013 Lucy is passing a well known hanging tree on her way to sell tracts at a marketplace.\u00a0 She\u2019s been knocked down by two men in a cart before she reaches it, and to her horror, she discovers a very recently hanged man at the tree.\u00a0 She\u2019s pretty sure the two men who knocked her down are responsible in some way and she hurries back to town for the Constable.<\/p>\n

The hanged man provides quite a puzzle:\u00a0 was he a murder or a suicide?\u00a0 If he was a suicide he cannot be buried in hallowed ground.\u00a0 The threads unraveled by Lucy, the Constable and Adam Hargreaves (recently back from the New World), depend upon a cipher found in the man\u2019s pocket. As Lucy attempts to figure out the cipher she heads to the house of a well known mathematician, a friend of the Hargreaves, who introduce her as they ask the man to help unscramble the code.\u00a0 Duncan is frustrated both by her access and the amount of time she\u2019s spending with Adam, and Lucy is frustrated when the mathematician is a dead end.<\/p>\n

This book has excellent pacing, and the story unfolds organically, as one piece fits seamlessly into the next. Calkins also skillfully creates a feeling of 1667 London, with the many layers of class, the way of life for ordinary people, even to the medicines taken and the food eaten.\u00a0 Calkins really puts the reader inside Lucy\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

Lucy is a wonderful character.\u00a0 She\u2019s intelligent, stubborn and relentless as she pursues answers to the many questions that arise throughout the book, some of which involve discerning the character of those she meets and attempting to sense if they are telling her the truth or not.\u00a0 The details of bookselling in 1667 are especially fascinating (certainly to this former bookseller), as it\u2019s a profession that\u2019s changed mightily, though happily still exists.<\/p>\n

I loved Lucy\u2019s personal \u201ccrossroads\u201d as she attempts to decide what\u2019s best for her moving forward.\u00a0 She\u2019s a strong character and a believable one.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t feel like an historical anachronism.\u00a0 This is a wonderful series, a really wonderful array of characters, and best of all a great mystery at the center of things.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love this series set in 1660\u2019s London, featuring former maid turned bookseller Lucy Campion.\u00a0 London has weathered both the plague and the great fire, and the upheaval finds some women able to take work usually reserved for men.\u00a0 While Lucy is not technically a bookseller\u2019s apprentice, she does everything an apprentice would do.\u00a0 In … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[501,503,504,10,502,486,104],"class_list":["post-3937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1667-london","tag-booksellers","tag-ciphers","tag-historical","tag-lucy-campion","tag-severn-house","tag-susanna-calkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3937"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3941,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937\/revisions\/3941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}