Derby Day is meticulously plotted and written with bouncy confidence. It tells the story of a sordid, conniving rascal called Happerton who plots a betting swindle for a Derby of the 1860s. He marries the colourless but near-sociopathic daughter of a rich attorney, and cheats on her without noticing the intensity of her passion for him. The couple sedate the old man, reduce him to his dotage and raid his savings. Happerton also masterminds a raid on the strong-room of a City jewellers — echoes here of the jewellery raid in Taylor’s previous novel, At the Chime of a City Clock.
All the while, with smug, relentless guile, he also collects the promissory notes of a debt-ridden squire called Davenant, a lonely widower who lives with his emotionally retarded daughter in a decaying house in the Lincolnshire Wolds.
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