London, 1728. A young, well-dressed man is driven through streets of jeering onlookers to the gallows at Tyburn. They call him a murderer.

But Tom Hawkins is innocent and somehow he has to prove it, before the rope squeezes the life out of him. It is, of course, all his own fault. He was happy settling down with Kitty Sparks.

He should never have told the most dangerous criminal in London that he was bored and looking for adventure. He should never have offered to help, the king's mistress. And most of all, he should never have trusted the witty, calculating Queen Caroline.

She has promised him a royal pardon if he holds his tongue but then again, there is nothing more silent than a hanged man. Based loosely on actual events, Antonia Hodgson's new novel is both a sequel to The Devil in the Marshalsea and a standalone historical mystery. From the gilded cage of the Court to the wicked freedoms of the slums, it reveals a world both seductive and deadly.

And it continues the rake's progress of Tom Hawkins - assuming he can find a way to survive the noose...