Why a Booktrail?
1796. A rigged election. A town at war. A murderer at large…
Scarlet Town
What you need to know before your trail
Disgraced former Foreign Office clerk Laurence Jago and his larger-than-life employer the journalist William Philpott have escaped America – and Philpott’s near imprisonment for libel – by the skin of their teeth. They return to Laurence’s home town of Helston, Cornwall, in the hope of rest and recuperation, but instead find themselves in the middle of a tumultuous election that has the inhabitants of the town at one another’s throats.
Only two men may vote in this rotten borough, and when one of them dies in suspicious circumstances, Laurence is ordered to investigate on behalf of the town’s patron, his old master the Duke of Leeds. But it is no easy matter, thanks to the machinations of the rival political factions, not to mention the riotous performances of Toby the Sapient Hog.
Then the second elector is poisoned and suspicion turns on the town doctor, the gentle Pythagoras Jago, Laurence’s own cousin. Suddenly Laurence finds himself ensnared in generations of bad blood and petty rivalries, with his cousin’s fate in his hands…
Travel Guide
Helston, Cornwall
The author note says:
This novel is inspired by a true story of an election in the market town of Helston, West Cornwall, in the late eighteenth century.
Prior to the reform at of 1832, Britain’s electoral arrangements were a shambles. Qualifications to vote varied arbitrarily from place to place and Cornwall, once the prosperous centre of tin mining , set 42 MPS to Parliament whilst Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham sent none at all.”
In 1790, there had been a long tussle between two opposing parties in Helston. The author has moved this story to 1796 but the general portrait of Helston remains inspired by the events of the earlier time. She has tried to keep the locations true to how they were then. The murders are fictional so a lot of the names have been changed.
There are many real life characters in the novel such as The Duke of Leeds and Thomas Glynn the Mayor is too. The Sapient Hog features in many novels of the time and the author wanted to include it too. Piggy is inspired by Dr Stephen Luke of Penzance.
Trail Gallery
BookTrail Boarding Pass: Scarlet Town
Destination: Helston, Cornwall Author/guide: Leonora Nattrass Departure Time: 1796
Back to ResultsWhere Next?
