title: Death of a Colonial (Sir John Fielding Mysteries)
author: Bruce Alexander
description: Blind 18th-century magistrate Sir John Fielding, hero of Alexander's popular series of historical detective fiction (Jack, Knave and Fool, etc.), here lends his investigative skills to the mystery surrounding the claimant to the vast estate of the late Lord Laningham. Since Fielding sentenced the last heir, Arthur Paltrow, to hanging for murder, he has a personal interest in the case. As before in the series, events are filtered through the eyes of Jeremy Proctor, the orphan Fielding unofficially adopted, whose natural talent for tracing the logic of events is fostered by the magistrate. The Fielding mysteries are always notable for their sense of place and rich historical detail, but Alexander relies more than usual this go-around on his descriptive powers, capturing perfectly the sybaritic pleasures of 18th-century Bath and the ebullience of the university community at Oxford. The plot, by contrast, feels perfunctory. If the claimant is illegitimate, the estate will go to King George III, and the king's solicitor-general, Sir Patrick Spenser, has convened a secret committee to make sure that the king gets his due. The claimant, who calls himself Lawrence Paltrow and is supposedly the younger brother of Arthur Paltrow, has turned up in England after eight years in the colonies, and his mother, overlooking certain physical discrepancies, claims to recognize him. Fielding reluctantly takes on the task of disabusing the mother. Promptly after his visit, she is killedAa death in which the circumstances recall an eight-year-old unsolved murder. What gray eminence stands behind the sequence of events in both deaths? This is a brisk and picturesque outing, but its relatively weak story line separates it from Alexander's best. <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  **Death of a Colonial**
  
  
    
  
  
  BRUCE ALEXANDER
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  ![logo](images/logo.jpg)
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
  
  
  Publishers Since 1838
  
  
  a member of
  
  
  Penguin Putnam Inc.
  
  
  375 Hudson Street
  
  
  New York, NY 10014
  
  
  Copyright © 1999 by Bruce Alexander
  
  
  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any
  form without permission. Published simultaneously in Canada
  
  
  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  
  
  Alexander, Bruce, date.
  
  
  Death of a colonial / by Bruce Alexander,
  
  
  p. cm.
  
  
  ISBN 0-399-14564-8
  
  
  
  
  
  * 1\. Fielding, John, Sir, 1721-1780 —Fiction. I. Title.
  
  
  
  
  
  PS3553.055314D45 1999 99-20978 CIP
  
  
  813’.54—dc21
  
  
  Printed in the United States of America
  
  
  13579 10 8642
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  _For Judith, again_
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  **ONE**
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  _In which Sir John_
  
  
  _reveals to me his failures_
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  ![header](images/header.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  At the age of sixteen, in the year of 1771, I, Jeremy Pr