The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins

De: Antonia Hodgson

Narrado por: John Lee

London, 1728. Tom Hawkins is headed to the gallows, accused of murder. Gentlemen don't hang, and Tom's damned if he'll be the first. He may not be much of a gentleman, but he is innocent. He just always finds his way into a spot of bad luck.

It's hard to say when Tom's troubles began. He was happily living in sin with his beloved, Kitty Sparks, though their neighbors were certainly less pleased about that. He probably shouldn't have told London's most cunning criminal mastermind that he was "bored and looking for adventure". Nor should he have offered to help the king's mistress in her desperate struggles with a brutal and vindictive husband. And he definitely shouldn't have trusted the calculating Queen Caroline. She's promised him a royal pardon if he holds his tongue, but then again, there is nothing more silent than a hanged man. Now Tom must scramble to save his life and protect those he loves. But as the noose tightens, his time is running out.

©2015 Antonia Hodgson (P)2016 Tantor

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Those who relish their historical action fast and vivid will enjoy...." ( Library Journal)

Very enjoyable!

Very enjoyable. Great plot twists and memorable characters. Fine narration. Thank you for time spent not listening.

Good Story, but did not care about the narrator

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

good, read, interesting.. the reader of the story was too distracting from the actual characters thus made listening somewhat uneasy.

Would you listen to another book narrated by John Lee?

No, but bought another book read by John Lee (not realizing ) and could not even finish listening to the story, Sorry to say..

An excellent sequel

This had a lot of twists and turns but ultimately, the murderer was who I suspected all along. It did make for an interesting story because there's a LOT that happens. This book start right at the end, with our leading man, Tom Hawkins, on his way to the gallows and it's a "you're probably wondering how I got here" moment. Because then we are transported back to the beginning.

This story takes place three months after the end of the first book - Tom and Kitty have moved in together and now run a print shop that Kitty inherited from Samuel Fleet (a man Tom met at the Marshelsea and Kitty's guardian). This is set in the 1720s, so their unwed status is a slight scandal, but Kitty couldn't care less about her reputation because she's come into money. We learn that Tom very much wants to marry her but is scared to ask the question for real in case Kitty does not say yes.

They have a very interesting romantic dynamic that I don't find often in romance books, and while this is not a romance book by any means, and doesn't pretend to be, (the mystery Tom gets entangled in and the dreary London setting wouldn't be the usual historical romance for instance) their relationship is JUST enough. This book actually does contains a bit of sex. It's all described in a very vague sense, but it is kind of on the page. But Tom does, in a moment of depression, kiss a woman who is not Kitty. I'm not bothered that much by it since he does not love that woman in question, but for the romance folks, that is a thing that happens in passing that I thought I'd mention.

Tom is former rake, but it is still a past life he can't fully escape and despite his short and harrowing stint in the Marshalsea jail (or gaol as it is written in the books), he has returned to gambling and drinking. He is restless in the face of peace, and running the print shop gets boring for him at times. Never mind that his job is illegal since they sell erotica on the side and his job is to copy and duplicate printings of erotica. Kitty is a very fierce and in charge girl who is not to be underestimated. She's a woman who decided that shooting a man once and letting him slowly die wasn't enough, and reloaded the gun and shot the man between the eyes to save Tom. Tom has much more delicate sensibilities in comparison. He grew up a parson's son and a gentleman, and he really can't stomach the sight of murder and blood. I honestly don't know how he's managed to survive without Kitty this whole time.

Tom and Kitty (despite their unwed status) have taken on a 14-year-old boy as their ward, a Sam Fleet. He is son to the most notorious and possibly most dangerous gang leader in London and rules from St. Giles (James Fleet). Sam's uncle and namesake was the man who left Kitty the print shop. Sam is a quiet boy and has a bit of a mysterious air about him. He's mostly a sullen teenager but he's grown up around violence and has been trained to one day take over the family business. But for now, he is interested in studying books more than anything else.

The main point of this story, however, is that Tom and Kitty's neighbor, Joseph Burden, gets murdered and Tom is suspect #1. It's not a secret that Tom and the man disliked one another and Tom even threatened his life the night before he was murdered. However, in a twist that I don't fully understand everyone just agreeing to, Tom is tasked with investigating the murder everyone thinks HE did. There's a number of suspects, including the man's children, an apprentice, a maid, and even Sam. The only people off the suspect list is really just Tom and Kitty.

I don't particularly think that Tom is a good detective. He's definitely never trained to be one, nor a spy. He also finds himself at a crosshairs with the Queen of England somehow as it seems that Tom has to take over the now vacant position Samuel Fleet left behind as a spy for the Queen. Tom goes about interviewing people and trying to make the best of the situation but he does eventually find himself caught between one too many parties and is locked up (again). This time though, it's at Newgate Prison because he's scheduled to be hanged at the gallows. This story definitely kept me on my toes even though I knew he literally has two more books in this series so I knew he couldn't DIE die.

This story is all the more stressful because it is told primarily in Tom's first-person POV. I love that this is a historical in first-person because we sure don't see that often in historical romance. I wonder if this is more normal with historical crime thrillers/mysteries? I will need to investigate because I love it a lot. I do like Tom's voice in the narrative sense. There are a few chapters here and there where the chapters are in third-person POV to report on what's happening TO Tom and I think it's very well done.

So, I did read this haphazardly - first with the US audiobook narrated by John Lee on Audible and then with the UK audiobook narrated by Joseph Kloska I finally located on Kobo. The UK narrator sounds much more like Tom’s 26 years and not like he’s 50+ like the US narrator and doesn’t have that odd accent.

However, it's a bit of a give and take on which narration you'll prefer because the UK audiobook is not as well edited as the US one. There is rustling paper and some swallowing noises that's on the UK audio that didn't all get edited out. There’s also some audio overlap at one point where the editor working on this audiobook messed up and I had to redownload the audio to listen to the epilogue because it kept stopping, and pressing play again only started a previous chapter. And there's nothing at the end of the audiobook after the epilogue to even indicate the book was done, and no author's note was read (and I know there is one).

I'm not sure if it’s something with the audio file that messed up or the Kobo app itself, which is quite outdated on iOS compared to every other audiobook app I’ve ever used. But the UK narrator is the narrator for the next two books even in the US, which I have through Audible so we’ll see how that goes. There is at least no sound effects added into the UK audiobook of this like they had for book 1.

This book did take me some time to get through only because of the harrowing danger Tom kept finding himself in that kept stressing me out. But I still really enjoyed Tom's adventures and how the story came together. This book cleanly leaves the door open to the next book to get you to keep reading. And thankfully book three is already out, so I will be jumping into that immediately.