When fourteen-year-old John Pickett is hauled into Bow Street for thieving an apple from a street vendor, the copper who brings him in is ready to lock him up and throw away the key. But magistrate Patrick Colquhoun recognizes his last name and asks the boy if he is the son of the criminal, he has just transported to Botany Bay. Not knowing that the man had left behind a child, Mr. Colquhoun seeks to rehabilitate the boy. Taking him to Elias Granger, a prosperous coal merchant, and asks him to take him on as an apprentice for the next five years, in leu of putting the boy in jail. Such harsh and hard work, John Pickett had never encountered, but it served him well, and he soon learned a different way of life. On Sundays he went to church with the family and also dined with them. The daughter of the Grangers, Sophy, began to flirt with John Pickett, and sneak him food not long after he came to board there. She taught him to play chess and he regularly beat her and her father at the game. John Pickett fell hard for Sophy . . . but was it just entertainment for her? Then one day, nineteen-year-old John Pickett noticed something whilst delivering coal which would change his future forever . . . This story, rich with the English dialect of the day, the descriptions of the happenings at the docks with the workers, the upper crust with their servants and hopes for their daughter’s future, and the Bow Street Runners are absolutely wonderful. This is the perfect start for a series that I am sure to continue!