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Title: The Thieves' Opera by Lucy Moore ISBN: 0-15-600640-5 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: January, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (9 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: Criminal Social History Rather than Historical True Crime
Comment: I bought this book because I have a weakness for accounts of historical crimes. Luckily I also have a weakness for social history because this book is more about the (mainly) London social conditions of the early 18th century than the crimes of the Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wilde.

It was interesting to be reading about the accused Jacobite who spent 30+ years in prison although he was not proved to be a traitor because he would not swear allegiance to the King of England-- Sheer stubbornness?-- at the same time that the Supreme Court has agreed to look at the case of the Guam detainees who have yet to be charged or tried by any legal body.

The author makes an argument that Jack Sheppard turned to crime because he was foreclosed from lawfully practicing his trade (carpenter) while Jonathan Wilde utilized a certain genius for organization to create the best organized thieves' gang of the era because that was the only opportunity open to him. While I am unable to buy her theory wholesale, the tidbits she provides about life in the early 18th century are well worth acquiring. I would wish that the Hogarth illustrations were larger and clearer but they provide a nice addition to the text.

However, I do have questions about the reliability of some of her sources. A couple of the things she mentioned as fact sound more like pure male fantasy or at best urban legends.

Not badly written and not boring.

Rating: 3
Summary: Subject only skimmed
Comment: The lives of Johnathan Wild and Tom Sheppard could have been told with so much more color. For the most part, I steadfastly plowed through this mostly boring book just to absorb some facts. It was rarely entertaining. The author mostly writes in a formal style. But, then occasionally she will throw in a zinger using conversational English. These breaks with formality were refreshing, interesting and I appreciated it. The most interesting parts of the book were the descriptions of the times, such as the laws, customs, homes, prisons, bribery and corruption, hangings, etc. The author gave an altogether graphic picture of what happens when a person is hanged.

Rating: 2
Summary: Not nearly as good as I expected
Comment: I was disappointed in this book. Even though the author succeeds in painting quite a clear canvas of eighteenth-century London's underworld, she fails to make her subject - the two famed criminals - interesting. I didn't find their personalities gripping, or their stories attractive in the least. The narrative is reiterative, the same things being mentioned again and again, and disjointed, lacking cohesiveness. Curiously, the most interesting parts were those which were accessory to the main story, such as the description of the legal system and medical practice. I wouldn't completely dismiss Lucy Moore as a historian, though - she undoubtedly has done a thorough research, and is not totally ungifted as a writer - but I still think this material would have merited a better rendering.