The Carpet-What?

The story begins in London, 1882 - a wet, drizzle-bedevilled summer. The sort of weather that turned beer flat, made bread go mouldy and flooded pavements with puddles...

But not everything is as it seems -

On the surface The Carpetbagger is a gripping crime thriller but lurking below there is so much more; it is about survival, moral ambiguity; radical politics, changing society and gender fluidity.

The story weaves through the grimy backstreets of London’s East End before reaching its conclusion in the bohemian world of Montmartre, Paris.

Told in the first person by an unnamed narrator, the story follows their descent from a life of domestic servitude in the north east of England to the criminal underbelly of London.

As a petty thief, the narrator prowls a city rife with corruption and discontent, preying on the wealthy who visit the East End to indulge in an exploitative entertainment known as slumming.

This is a world of opportunistic crime; bribing crooked constables; dropping in on illegal fistfights; encountering army imposters and just scraping by.

Meanwhile, radical socialist ideas, fuelled by displaced Germans and growing unrest, seep into London’s streets threatening the rigid hierarchies of Victorian society.

But survival takes a darker turn when the narrator becomes ensnared in a deadly conspiracy. A fervent Afrikaner, intent on securing an independent Boer homeland, has devised a shocking assassination plot...

The narrator suddenly becomes the prey and must escape and flee but before doing so there is a twist.

The underlay beneath the carpet

Where did the idea for The Carpetbagger come from?

Well...it goes back a little time and I have written about this at various times on the Random Musings page. Suffice to say, after a brutal experience with a New York publishing company, I didn't really want to write anymore. But then, an idea began to trickle into me noggin, as the characters in The Carpetbagger would probably say.

The original idea involved a disgruntled soldier who had sustained some sort of injury as a member of the British Army. He and his common-law wife devised a plot to kill Queen Victoria. The assassination was to take place during Victoria and Albert's visit to the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. And really, that was as far as it got - I decided after mulling the plot over for a bit that it wasn't super original. But then I began to change and twist the plot. Why not tell it from the perspective of an outsider; someone alien to London - enter the narrator. Still keep the disgruntled soldier though but develop him. And so we get Fistie - a pawnbroker who is as bent as they come and...when he was a lad, fought in the Opium Wars (against China) as a 14 or 15 year old 'boy' soldier in the British Army.

The rest of the story developed from there. It was a fairly easy-ish case of researching what was going on in London, particularly the East End during the 1880's. However, it needed to be prior to 1888 and the beginning of the Whitechapel murders - that would just distract from the plot. So, 1882 it was. At that time there was unrest in the air; society was changing and there was resistance. Radical thought abounded and there were several active groups holding meetings and giving lectures, especially in the Soho area.

Then there was the fist fighting or bare knuckle fighting. It was quite the attraction but had been eased out following the adoption of the Queensberry Rules which brought about the use of boxing gloves, three minute rounds and the knock out rule. The narrator visits such a fight and then contrasts it with a female boxing exhibition match where, ironically, they get beaten up!

We also find out about the Boers and their fight for a homeland in South Africa. For a brief time the Boer farmers did manage to hold off the British Army and this is mentioned within the book and this is a turning point in the story. Everything leads to this point and the ripples spread out. Enter the Afrikaner. Quite a boorish character who has a single purpose... To find out more you'll need to read the book!

There are two different covers for The Carpetbagger. I initially wanted the map cover but there were problems in locating a sufficiently high quality copy, meaning the cover looked a touch unfocussed. Hence the 'alternative' cover. I have now sourced a higher resolution of the map - it is a crop of Charles Booth's poverty map first published in 1889 - a little after the setting of the book but, hey, artistic license! At the time of writing, I am waiting for a proof copy of the new cover to arrive. Providing all is fine, I will be getting a new supply of the map cover Carpetbagger to sell on this site.

Rachael Anne Long April 2025