PLUCKING PLUMS FROM
TYBURN TREE​

Or, How I learned to embrace the Great British meltdown and make a killing from the gallows

 

 

A French gangster wants to blow the doors off Raghu’s billion dollar crypto-exchange – and if fixer JW doesn't get a grip, their street war will soon turn into a global one.

 

It is the future and London has changed, with capital punishment brought back for the smallest of crimes. In this parlous world, JW runs a discreet recovery service from offices in St James’s Square. Birkin bags, blueprints for nuclear enrichment plants, priceless art – if someone has stolen it, he can usually get it back, especially if one of his gangs did the thieving in the first place.

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Raghu, a crypto billionaire with more shady secrets than Al Capone and Lady Macbeth combined, recently asked JW to retrieve an iPhone filled with photos that his wife shouldn't see. Now Raghu is back. A French gangster known as La Marseillaise has lopped off one of his fingers, eager to persuade him to freeze the accounts of eight Russian oligarchs. JW is drawn into a war stretching from Hoxton to Moscow. London streets run red. Political certainties in the Kremlin crumble.

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JW set out to fix a problem. Now he has to decide whether he is stopping a revolution – or starting one.​

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Plucking Plums from Tyburn Tree reimagines the story of real 1720s crime boss Jonathan Wild in a near-future London where the ‘Bloody Code’ – which specified the death penalty for more than a hundred crimes – has returned. It's our past ... and maybe our future too.