There are books I read for the characters. Others, for the suspense. And then there are those that carry me into a world so vividly that I feel the chimney smoke and the street smells still clinging to me long after I close the book.
The Sir John Fielding series by Bruce Alexander belongs, for me, in this last category.
Sir John Fielding, a historical figure who truly existed – judge, reformer, blind since his youth – becomes an investigator here who moves through eighteenth-century London with sharp wit and unwavering sense of justice. At his side stands Jeremy Proctor, an orphan boy, who opens the door to this world for me, letting me see it through his eyes and making it come alive with his wonder.
What sets this series apart is not only the immersion in an age of upheaval, but the way Alexander renders change palpable. London itself seems to breathe change: the first coffee houses, where politics and gossip mingle; the Bow Street Runners, a precursor of the modern police. The stories show not only how cases are solved, but how a city reinvents itself, the press and the turmoil of a city whose growth outpaces its rules.
Alexander manages to use all this not as a mere backdrop, but as a living world. History does not happen in the background here, but in every street scene, every tavern conversation, every trial in court – they carry the dust, the sound, the energy of this era, not preserved in archives but alive in the streets – among merchants, thieves, judges and dreamers.
What do I take away from it?
That good crime literature does not only solve puzzles, but also opens new perspectives – on times, places and people we might never otherwise have seen, as for example through the “eyes” of a blind man.
That world-building does not only take place in fantasy or science fiction – but also right in the middle of our past, when someone tells it in a way that makes it come alive again.
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