Conspiracy!



A Conspiracy of Paper [by] David Liss
New York; Ballantine Books [2000] 
0804119120 ; $14.00

Benjamin Weaver, a Jew of Portuguese extraction living in London, has made his name as celebrated Prizefighter, “The Lion of Judah,” until he is brought down by a rival, with a bone-shattering injury that ends his career.  He spends a brief time as a criminal:  burglar, highway robber, and cutpurse, until he finds a slightly more savory living as an independent “protector, guardian, bailiff, constable-for-hire, and thief-taker.”  The London of 1719, when Ben starts out on his new career, is a stew of criminal life, with good men easily robbed on the streets, or by prostitutes and their ruffian cohorts, and businessmen pay protection to their regulators in order to avoid trumped-up charges.  The stench of the sewers is ripe and the skullduggery is riper in the 18^th Century London portrayed here by author David Liss, in the half-century before the first police force, the Bow Street Runners, is founded by Magistrate Sir John Fielding (who isn’t yet born until 2 years after this book begins.)  However, it also means that outsider Ben can pretty much go wherever he wants.

When an arrogant client engages Weaver to investigate his father’s murder, but seems to have withheld vital information, Ben finds himself embroiled in a multitude of confusing and dangerous intrigues, with furtive meetings and narrow escapes aplenty.  This starts with Ben’s suspicions about his own father’s “accidental” death, and his discovery of the complex secret life of his own cousin, the beautiful and dangerous Miriam.  The plot expands to embrace the underworld ruled by the legendary first crime lord, Jonathan Wild (a real person, whose life is somewhat manipulated by the author to fit the plot), and the machinations of “stock-jobbing” as they relate to the (subsequently infamous) South Sea Company, suspected of masterminding a scheme in which “money in England is replaced with the promise of money.”

Ben is a fearless man of action, a resentful ethnic alien in a world that despises him.  But his criminal past gives him the street smarts to maintain his own in the tricky world around him, and to cater to the well-to-do, who depend on his services to maintain their own well-being.  In his journey to the center of the mystery, Ben revisits his own roots, reconnecting with a culture that is singularly isolated from Christian London, as he simultaneously enters the strange, deceitful orbit of the South Sea Company, which is built on phony stock certificates and the interest of all that this house of cards is not publically acknowledged.  In the light of recent corporate shenanigans, we are reminded that, although the “South Sea Bubble” was the first stock market crash, it was not to be the last.  And in the light of recent scandals, thievery, murder, and the destruction of both rich and poor are still alive and well in the English-speaking world.

The book is based on Liss’ doctoral thesis work at Columbia University, but he manages to make it a lively story, rather than a series of boring articles on financial failures at the dawn of the stock market.  Ben and the people he meets and works with help to make it lively, as does the chaotic and dangerous life of 18^th Century London.  Recommended. ~ lss-r

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This book is mine.