Golden Hill

This book hit all of my favorite reading zones: historical fiction, mystery, adventure. It opens with Mr. Smith's arrival in New York from London, and two basic questions: how does a 23 year-old come by a bill for 1,000 pounds (about $200,000 in today's money), and what does he plan to do with all this cash once he has it in hand? These questions simmer and build among the citizens as Mr. Smith adventures around New York, never far from their prying and gossiping tongues. For me the questions often slipped to the background as one after another heart-stopping moment bubbled up; at times I was racing through passages because if I lingered the tension would have killed me. We are never very far from the start, however - suddenly readers are given tantalizing glimpses into Mr. Smith's mind, and we are urgently swept right back to those two original questions.

I picked this book up without any knowledge of the author or the storyline, but being attracted by the blurb on the back. It turned out to be a complete delight. Set in 18th century Manhattan, New York, it concerns a young man calling himself Richard Smith who gets off a boat from England and presents a bill to the local banker for an enormous sum of money. He refuses to answer any questions about his business or what he intends to do with the money. Since the bill has to be verified with the issuing bank in England, and there's a waiting period imposed by the American bank on paying out large sums, there is plenty of time for people to speculate and spread rumors. While he is waiting, Smith finds himself drawn into relationships with people in the town, some friendly, some shady, some fraught with political intrigue. Attempts are made on his life, and he lands in jail accused of fraud with the prospect of hanging. When he portrays a heroic character in a town play, it leads to a series of events which bring the life he had set up for himself in New York falling to pieces around him.

The book reads like a light hearted historical adventure novel, where the hero finds himself in one tight corner after another but escapes with his life every time. But in one of the letters Smith composes to his father while in prison on suspicion of fraud, we start to see that this adventure is not so light hearted, and that the stakes are much higher than we initially thought. When we finally learn, along with the banker and the rest of Smith's New York acquaintances, what his business is, we see everything that happened before in a new light.

This book is a pleasure to read all the way though. It IS a historical adventure novel, with a mysterious young man who manages to get himself out of some scary situations through a combination of wit and good luck. But it also subverts the genre. The heroine and love interest is an anti-heroine extraordinaire, and the young man's business is a poke in the eye to the well-to-do colonials and the English establishment who make money from business in the colonies.