The Betrayal Of Thomas True by A.J. West

 

The Betrayal of Thomas True by A.J. West.

Published 4th July 2024 by Orenda Books.

From the cover of the book:

The only sin is betrayal…

It is the year 1715, and Thomas True has arrived on old London Bridge with a dangerous secret. One night, lost amongst the squalor of London’s hidden back streets, he finds himself drawn into the outrageous underworld of the molly houses.

Meanwhile, carpenter Gabriel Griffin struggles to hide his double life as Lotty, the molly’s stoic guard. When a young man is found murdered, he realises there is a rat amongst them, betraying their secrets to a pair of murderous Justices.

Can Gabriel unmask the traitor before they hang? Can he save hapless Thomas from peril, and their own forbidden love?

Set amidst the buried streets of Georgian London, The Betrayal of Thomas True is a brutal and devastating thriller, where love must overcome evil, and the only true sin is betrayal…

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London, 1715. Young Thomas True has run away from his unhappy life in the village of Highgate. His new residence perches amongst the tumbledown shops and houses on the old London Bridge, but living a stone's throw away from the squalid maze of the City's backstreets is not the place to forget the doubts that have led him to flee his strict religious upbringing. In the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral, Thomas' wanderings in the City's dark and gritty underbelly bring him to the door of Old Mother Clap's, the infamous molly house where he finally feels at home. 

By day, Carpenter Gabriel Griffin is working on the finishing touches of the Cathedral, but at night he stands guard at Mother Clap's as its impassive guard Lotty. He knows all about living a double-life, torn between his grief for the wife and child he has lost and the desires he cannot deny. When one of the mollies is found murdered, he realises that there must be a rat among them, however impossible this seems. 

As Gabriel tries to track down the traitor, he begins to look at every one of his molly family with a suspicious eye. Who among them would sell their secrets, when their very motto is 'Always Together'? Can he save them, and himself, from the gallows, and finally find happiness in forbidden love with the apparently innocent newcomer Thomas?

In A.J. West's stunning second novel, he brings the hot-bed of Georgian London alive to explore the secretive world of the City's molly houses. Having read a tonne of historical fiction in my time, it would be hard not to have heard about the molly houses, but I think this is the first book I have read that really explores what it would have been like to have been part of this world. You can feel the care West has taken to make this novel as authentic as possible - and not just in the considerable research he has clearly undertaken into London's gay history.

It is hard to encapsulate what London was like in 1715, at the very beginning of the shiny, new Georgian era, with the bizarre juxtaposition with the older, seedy parts of the City, and the stately environs that rose from the ashes of the Great Fire, but West vividly captures the contrasts and contradictions of the time to perfection. And more than that, he extends this feeling of a constant struggle to reconcile different natures of this city to the souls of his characters too. 

Essentially, this is a period murder mystery, which has Gabriel desperately trying to find a traitor against the backdrop of a city openly hostile to the mollies. Caught between the necessity of living outwardly respectable existences, and the call of their true natures, West's mollies drive the tempo of this story, in all their fevered, glorious double-life wonder - reflecting the light and dark of the city that surrounds them. He also offers very clever clashes of perspective by looking at events through the eyes of the jaded Gabriel, with all his inner turmoil, and the terribly vulnerable Thomas who steps wrong time and time again as he embraces his emotions.

My heart was in my mouth for almost the entire story. Public hangings, political machinations, religious fervour, and power games combine to make a perfect storm of peril unleashed by mobs, assassins, and devious magistrates with private agendas. West weaves threads of mystery and danger relentlessly around the lives of his characters to create a historical thriller with immense power, keeping you guessing about who The Rat at the heart of the story really is - and when the truth comes it will shock you to the core.

My goodness, this book utterly broke me, carrying me through every moment of the joys and sorrows of Mother Clap's molly family. While this is a work of fiction, West portrays the lives of men who were consumed like moths by the flame of their existence, standing and dying together, simply for the freedom to love each other as they wished. What a heart-breaking, beautiful, and unforgettable story of love and courage.

The Betrayal of Thomas True is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats. You can support indie publishing by buying direct from Orenda Books HERE.

Thank you to Orenda Books for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review, and to Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

A.J. West's bestselling debut novel The Spirit Engineer won the Historical Writers' Association Debut Crown Award, gaining international praise for its telling of a long-forgotten true story. His second novel, The Betrayal of Thomas True, is published July 2024.

An award winning BBC newsreader and reporter, he has written for national newspapers and regularly appears on network television discussing his writing and the historical context of contemporary events.

A passionate historical researcher, he writes at The London Library and museum archives around the world.