About this item
"We are transported. We are consigned to the ends of the Earth. And we are therefore as good as dead to the realm and its judges. There can be no hope of reprieve ... "Gabriel Carver, the convict hangman of Sydney Prison, knows that none of his kind may depart Australia's penal colony without the system's leave. Then three people are murdered, seemingly to protect the "Rats' Line," an illicit path to freedom that exists only in the fevered imaginations of transported felons. But why kill to protect something that doesn't exist?When an innocent woman from Carver's past is charged with one of the murders and faces execution at his hands, she threatens to reveal an incriminating secret of his own unless he helps her. So Carver must try to unmask the killer among the convicts, soldiers, sailors, and fallen women roaming 1829 Sydney.
About the Author
Andrei Baltakmens was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, of Latvian descent. He has a Ph.D. in English literature, focused on Charles Dickens and Victorian urban mysteries. His first novel, The Battleship Regal, was published in New Zealand in 1996. His short fiction has appeared in various literary journals, and his first historical mystery, THE RAVEN'S SEAL, was published in 2012. Since 2004, he has lived in Ithaca, New York and Brisbane, Australia, where he recently completed a doctorate in Creative Writing at The University of Queensland. He now lives in Palo Alto, California, with his wife and son, and works for Stanford University as an instructional designer.
His next historical novel, A HANGMAN FOR GHOSTS, will be forthcoming in 2018.
