num_pages: 529
description: The American adventurer Jonathan Blair has been chased by scandal out of West Africa to the stranger land of Victorian England. Gin-soaked and shaking from malaria, he must travel to Wigan, a town in the darkest part of England, to solve the mysterious disappearance of a young cleric.Nineteenth-century Wigan is two worlds. On the surface is the serene land of the moneyed. But in the coal pits that reach below the surface lurks a separate world where miners eke out their short, violent lives. The missing cleric, John Maypole, has crossed the line between these worlds. He is engaged to Charlotte, the daughter of the bishop who owns the mine. But Charlotte is as cold as ice, and Maypole seems to have had a fatal encounter with the opposite sort of woman, an earthy, unforgettable pit girl -- Rose. In searching for Maypole, Blair finds himself involved not only with the lives of the miners who make the bishop rich and the pit girls who are the scandal of the country, but also with his own shadowy origins.Rose is a richly detailed and astonishing evocation of a time and place unfamiliar to most readers. It is also a love story, an adventure, and a haunting mystery that will surprise even the most fervent admirers of Martin Cruz Smiths talents.
language: English
title: Rose
titlecomplete: Rose
genres: Fiction, Historical, Mystery, Thriller, British Literature, Mystery Thriller, Historical Mystery, Novels, Historical Fiction, Crime
ratings_count: 3310
awards: awardedAt: 820483200000
name: Hammett Prize
publisher: Random House Large Print