The Infidel Stain (Avery & Blake 2)

Travel Guide

Victorian London. Not quite as exotic as the Indian setting of the first book but very much detailed and equally evocative.

Every cobble of the alleyways, the dark corners of the bars and other establishments as the duo navigate their way around can be experienced.

Blake and Avery have many an obstacle in this case – especially since they are now relatively famous ever since their jungle adventures were immortalised in a painting by B R Haydon. Blake still dresses like a poor man but it’s his experiences of the slums of the East End of London that will prove useful.

Literary London

Happily he is related to the poet William Blake, and so as he wanders London’s “chartered streets” a lot of literary London comes to light. This is the London of Charles Dickens and other literary figures such as Henry Mayhew, the founder of Punch magazine. We walk right into the heart of publishing at the time – an industry and a city which was going through a time of reform and revolution and at the centre of it all was the humble but mighty powerful printed word..

“The printers who have died are seemingly those who produce the more salubrious reading matter for the masses.”

And this is a London of two very different classes – the haves and the have nothing at alls – Lord Allington wants to support social reform but has very old fashioned ideas of things such as childbirth since the bible tells him one thing and his mind another. Victorian hypocrisy is on every street corner.

It’s  this London of contrasts, restraint, reform and chaos that we walk and see through the eyes of Blake and Avery.