Jack Maggs (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780679760375)

The Booker Prize-winning author of Oscar and Lucinda returns to the nineteenth century in an utterly captivating mystery. The year is 1837 and a stranger is prowling London. He is Jack Maggs, an illegal returnee from the prison island of Australia. He has the demeanor of a savage and the skills of a hardened criminal, and he is risking his life on seeking vengeance and reconciliation.
Installing himself within the household of the genteel grocer Percy Buckle, Maggs soon attracts the attention of a cross section of London society. Saucy Mercy Larkin wants him for a mate. The writer Tobias Oates wants to possess his soul through hypnosis. But Maggs is obsessed with a plan of his own. And as all the various schemes converge, Maggs rises into the center, a dark looming figure, at once frightening, mysterious, and compelling. Not since Caleb Carr's The Alienist have the shadowy city streets of the nineteenth century lit up with such mystery and romance.

Author: Peter Carey
ISBN-10: 0679760377
ISBN-13: 9780679760375
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Language: English
Published: 02/22/1999
Pages: 368
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 7.98h x 5.13w x 0.74d
Award: Guardian First Book Award - Nominee

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly Best Books 01/01/1998 pg. 40