Milling About

Author Antonia Hodgson joins host Robin Milling at Kings Cross bar down in the Bowery in New York City to talk about her new murder mystery, The Devil In the Marshalsea. It's a fitting place to meet as her novel is set in 18th century gritty London where oweing a debt can land you in the city's most notorious prison -- the Marshalsea Gaol, and the Bowery was once home to vagrants and street criminals. Facts meet fiction in this page turner featuring the charming rogue Thomas Hawkins whose gambling habits get the best of him and he is thrown into the gaol where a murderer is still at large. Antonia tells Robin she spent many hours in the British public library researching prisoner's diaries, becoming fascinated with the debtors prisons where rich and poor alike ironically had to scrounge up money to pay for food and shelter in these seedy surroundings. She decided to set her crime novel in this world where whores, society gentlemen and scoundrels live under the roof of the ruthless governor William Acton who