The Betrayal of Thomas True - A.J. West - ★★.¾

AUTHOR: A.J. West

GENRE: Historical Mystery

PUBLICATION DATE: June 1, 2024

RATING: 2.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: A historical crime mystery focussed on “molly houses” of Georgian London. Fabulous research and great use of the historical setting, but somehow, the writing style and character development didn’t work for me. This is an outlier review.

Plot Preview:

Twenty-year-old Thomas True, just arrived in London after having escaped from his judgemental father’s residence, finds himself lured by Mother Clap’s scandalous molly house. The guard of the molly house is Gabriel Griffin, a serious carpenter who lives a double life as Lotty at Mother Clap’s. After one of the mollies is murdered, Gabriel figures out that there is a rat among them, betraying their secret to two murderous justices of the Society of Reformation. Will Gabriel be able to discover the rat’s identity before they are all either hanged for sodomy or murdered brutally?

The story comes to us in the third person perspective of various characters, chiefly of Gabriel and Thomas.

Bookish Yays:

😍 The author is a historical researcher, and it shows! I had not heard about molly houses, but the book doesn’t just stop at giving us a brief overview of these historical meeting places for homosexual men but also highlights some of their special practices and rituals. The book also depicts the atrocities committed by bigots in the name of religion.

😍 Gabriel is a strong character. The only character whose actions and behaviour I could mostly connect with and whom I could root for. To me, he made the book memorable.

😍 I am very impressed by the vocabulary usage. I can’t remember the last time I relied on my Kindle dictionary so much. There were so many historical words that the book felt authentic to its era.

😍 The historical setting of old London is depicted exceedingly well.

😍 Thomas’s Uncle and Aunt Quince are fun additions to the plot. In such a serious storyline, their presence and Uncle Quince’s fascination with his tallow candle business offer comic relief.

Bookish Mixed Bags:

😐 The time period of the plot isn’t mentioned directly. The actual plot mentions nothing. The introductory blurb (which I chanced upon after completing the novel) mentions the year as 1710, and the Goodreads blurb (which I didn’t even read until now) refers to the year as 1715. As such, I read the whole book just knowing that it was from long ago. I wish the year had been clarified at the start of the actual story. This isn’t a major issue, but I prefer knowing the time period clearly.

😐 Each of the “mollies” in the book has two names: their masculine birth name and their feminine molly name. This made the proceedings a bit confusing for me. There is a helpful table at the start, detailing the molly names of all the ten mollies, but I find it tedious to navigate to and fro on my Kindle.

😐 The mollies, Mother Clap, and the Quinces all have interesting personae. However, because of the numerous characters, there is only a superficial development of each person. I felt like the characters were explored at just surface-level and I didn’t really get to understand most of them.

Bookish Nays:

😕 I don’t know why Thomas True was the titular character, or why the word ‘betrayal’ had to be a part of the title when it isn’t even a part of the storyline for most of the way. I had expected to connect to Thomas the best because of his being the eponymous lead, but somehow, I never got a handle on him. His behaviour felt quite ad hoc.

😕 There is one part of the book when the plot suddenly incorporates magical realism. Though I love magical realism, I didn’t see how it fit into this storyline as it came out of nowhere and was discarded equally suddenly.

😕 A few of the scenes were too gory for my liking. I also didn’t get how one particular character survived a heinous attack made on him without any medical issue. It didn’t seem realistic.

😕 The reveal about the rat’s identity didn’t satisfy me. It felt half-baked, and left a few questions unanswered.

😕 The story didn’t settle into a steady rhythm. The scene transitions also seemed a bit abrupt. I feel like the book could have gone a lot more into the hows and the whys, but it limits itself to the whats. The dragged reveal of the rat’s identity also was annoying. It was more like deliberate miscommunication.

😕 My copy doesn’t have an author’s note, which is sad because the story certainly deserved one. A line at the end says that this is entirely a work of fiction. However, when I looked up molly houses, I saw that Mother Clap’s was an actual place, and some of the characters in this book seemed to have real-life counterparts. I wish there had been some light shed on this.

Basically, I loved the historical aspects of this book. It brings to light the reality of molly houses and the heinous manner in which homosexual men were targets of moralistic prudes. However, because of the somewhat flat character development, especially of the eponymous Thomas True, the book didn’t work better for me.

I must say that I am very much an outlier in my opinion. Most reviews for this book are strongly positive. So I urge you to read them and take a call on this work.

This would be appealing to readers of historical fiction with an interest in real-life LGBTQ+ troubles of the past.

My thanks to The Book Club Reviewer Group for a complimentary copy of “The Betrayal of Thomas True”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.