|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
England in 1902 was a bitterly divided country. Technology had brought tremendous changes but only the middle and upper classes benefited. Small farmers were forced from their land and flocked to the cities in search of work. Working conditions were miserable and the workers had no control over them. In the cities people lived in the most abject poverty. The large masses not only in England but also throughout the industrialized world hoped and dreamed of change and out of these conditions was born a whole series of 'isms' dedicated to making the world a better place for the common man. Of these 'isms' the most feared was anarchism. In its purest form it would destroy every institution, believing that only then would people be free to enjoy a better life. Many anarchists believed that the only way to change the world was through violence and they advocated selective violence against leaders as well as generalized violence. The American President McKinley had been assassinated only the previous year. In England Edward VII was about to be crowned, an event he had waited for for a very long time. Special Branch, police created just to track down threats against the government, in the form of Inspector Earnest Ashcraft, were carefully watching a small group of anarchists associated with the newspaper the Anarchist Clarion including the editor Charlotte Conway. When shortly after the coronation an inept assassin carrying a bomb through Hyde Park tripped, fell, and blew himself to smithereens, the police moved in and arrested all the anarchists except Charlotte who got away over the roof. Watching her getaway was a visiting American author, Jack London. The King asked Charles, Lord Sheridan, to investigate the event (the accidental bombing) and find out if there were really a threat to him or to the government. In the process Charles got involved with the three anarchists who were accused of having bombs in their rooms although they insisted they had none. Meanwhile through a young actress friend Lady Kathryn Ardleigh Sheridan (Kate) had gotten involved with Charlotte. As in every book written by this husband and wife duo, the history is excellent. The events of the time period, the flavor of the fear that society in general had of anarchists, the terrible living and working conditions (chronicled by Jack London in his People of the Abyss) are all carefully and completely delineated. There is even a very nice authors' note at the end of the book expanding on several aspects of the history. The characters are a little less well-defined. While not completely stereotypes, they are not quite three-dimensional either. They feel, to me, to be actors in a play doing quite well to play the part but not quite believable. There are a great many characters, by the way, and it is a help to have a list of characters in the beginning of the book. The plot is intriguing. It is mostly suspense. The only death is inadvertent. But there is a considerable fear that the three anarchists (one actually is not an anarchists, but he was in the office at the time) will get railroaded to jail just because of what they advocated. There is certainly a lesson about free speech and whether or not people have the freedom to advocate changes if the government wants to prevent these changes from happening. This is a book from which one can learn and which makes one think.
Reviewed by Sally Fellows, April 2004
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
