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A review by bellatora
The Thief Taker by Janet Gleeson
4.0
Despite the name, this book is not about a thief taker. Nor is the thief taker a love interest (which was my other guess going into this book). He is in fact a rapey rapist who the actual protagonist, the cook Agnes Meadowes, outwits.
Agnes Meadowes is the cook for a family of wealthy silversmiths. In the course of 24-hours, Agnes finds out that her son's caretaker has gotten sick and can no longer take care of him (bad because at that time servants couldn't have their children live with them), a flighty, flirty maidservant goes missing, and an expensive silver piece is stolen and the apprentice standing guard is murdered. A bad day for Agnes. For some reason she's tasked by the family with finding the silver thief (because...something about how they need someone within the household to question the other servants? It's a fairly thin excuse, but go with it). Agnes is supposed to just go to the local thief taker and pay him and he will "find" the silver (although everyone knows that in reality he likely stole the silver just so he could be paid to recover it, in standard thief-taker practice). Which makes Agnes' employers making her their designated detective even more confusing.
Agnes, however, goes off-task, as she is determined to find the missing servant girl. Agnes feels a responsibility for her underling. Also, she feels a bond with the servant girl, because she once caught her having sex in the pantry. This I never understood. If I caught someone having sex, I would not develop a soft spot for her. But Agnes does (maybe she's jealous that the servant girl enjoys a lusty sex life, whereas Agnes has only experience abuse at the hands of her dead husband?). Agnes thinks that the missing servant girl and the missing silver may be connected. So she runs around questioning people, and outwitting the creepy thief taker and falling in love with the silversmith apprentice who aids her and continually jeopardizing her job by brazenly questioning everyone. Agnes is tenacious, but not terribly subtle.
I'm not sure how well the mystery holds together - it feels like there was too much going on and then all the pieces suddenly jumped into place. But Gleeson is good at historical fiction - she can slip into the period and bring it to life. It doesn't feel like it's just 21st century people in corsets and britches, like some "historical" fiction.
Agnes Meadowes is the cook for a family of wealthy silversmiths. In the course of 24-hours, Agnes finds out that her son's caretaker has gotten sick and can no longer take care of him (bad because at that time servants couldn't have their children live with them), a flighty, flirty maidservant goes missing, and an expensive silver piece is stolen and the apprentice standing guard is murdered. A bad day for Agnes. For some reason she's tasked by the family with finding the silver thief (because...something about how they need someone within the household to question the other servants? It's a fairly thin excuse, but go with it). Agnes is supposed to just go to the local thief taker and pay him and he will "find" the silver (although everyone knows that in reality he likely stole the silver just so he could be paid to recover it, in standard thief-taker practice). Which makes Agnes' employers making her their designated detective even more confusing.
Agnes, however, goes off-task, as she is determined to find the missing servant girl. Agnes feels a responsibility for her underling. Also, she feels a bond with the servant girl, because she once caught her having sex in the pantry. This I never understood. If I caught someone having sex, I would not develop a soft spot for her. But Agnes does (maybe she's jealous that the servant girl enjoys a lusty sex life, whereas Agnes has only experience abuse at the hands of her dead husband?). Agnes thinks that the missing servant girl and the missing silver may be connected. So she runs around questioning people, and outwitting the creepy thief taker and falling in love with the silversmith apprentice who aids her and continually jeopardizing her job by brazenly questioning everyone. Agnes is tenacious, but not terribly subtle.
I'm not sure how well the mystery holds together - it feels like there was too much going on and then all the pieces suddenly jumped into place. But Gleeson is good at historical fiction - she can slip into the period and bring it to life. It doesn't feel like it's just 21st century people in corsets and britches, like some "historical" fiction.