I'm on a kick here with people who write really amazing books while doing other really amazing things. At least Liss was completing a PhD in English while writing a piece of literature - mind you, I couldn't write a piece of fiction while finishing my PhD (I had enough with finishing the PhD, and don't even get me started on these final revisions...) - but, like, books and English PhDs go together at least.

Anyhoo, I read the Spectacle of Corruption first, so I'm totally out of order, but both books are really great and gripping reads. Benjamin Weaver is a great character, an outsider first because he is Jewish and second because he is a thief-taker, and all the more intelligent and aware of the hypocrisies of society because of it. Having read Spectacle frst, I know more about the Jacobites than I ever have before. Now I've learned a great deal about stock-jobbery and the South Sea Company. Oh, and that London had no police force in the early 18C.