Gallows Thief

Rider Sandman, a hero at Waterloo, returns home to a country where both corruption and social unrest run rampant, and where "justice" is most often delivered—to those whose primary crime is poverty—at the end of a hangman's noose.

Penniless, Sandman accepts a job investigating the case of a painter due to be hanged for a murder he didn't commit. In a race against the clock, Sandman moves from the hellish bowels of Newgate prison to the perfumed drawing rooms of the aristocracy—and in the process begins to peel back the layers of an utterly corrupt penal system that pits him against the wealthiest and most ruthless men in Regency England.