An uneasy blend of gallows and humour

Bernard Cornwell's latest novel is set in 1817, two years after Waterloo, a battle at which his hero, Captain Rider Sandman of the 52nd Foot, distinguished himself. But, forced to sell out after his father committed suicide to avoid arrest for forgery, and with cricket - he is a noted batsman - his only source of income, Sandman is now leading a hand-to-mouth existence, living in The Wheatsheaf, a Drury Lane tavern with a more than dubious reputation.

He's therefore overjoyed when the Home Secretary offers him a fee to look into the case of Charles Corday, who is to hang in a week for the rape and murder of the Countess of Avebury. The Home Office wants an inquiry only for appearances' sake, but Sandman, whose integrity is absolute (though down to his last doit, he refuses to be paid for taking part in a cricket match which turns out to be fixed), convinces himself of Corday's innocence and, aided by Sally Hood, an actress and model, Sergeant Berrigan, an ex-Guardsman and his friend and fellow cricketer, the Reverend Lord Alexander Pleydell, frantically strives to find a missing witness to the murder.

Ranged against him are a number of enemies, including the members of the Seraphim Club - young debauchees, who spend their time swiving (to use the author's expression), in the club's luxurious apartments, girls picked up on the street, prostitutes and married women. Approved members of this last group have their portraits in the nude - Corday was painting the Countess - hung in the club's gallery. But Sandman, as heroic as he was at Waterloo, proves invulnerable to threats, bribery, cudgels and even balls from Baker rifles.

Cornwell is obviously fervently opposed to capital punishment. Two scenes in the book, describing, with a wealth of well-researched detail, public hangings at Newgate, are extremely powerful, even stomach-churning: no wonder that Sir Henry Forrest, witnessing, in his official capacity as an alderman, an execution for the first time, cannot look forward to enjoying the devilled kidneys that are - as we are told eight times in the course of the book - traditionally served to visitors after the event. But these scenes sit oddly with - indeed, their effect is to some extent undermined by - the tone of jokey sentimentality that pervades the rest of the narrative: itself not much more than Sharpe and water. Though, as always, Cornwell keeps one turning the pages at light infantry pace.