Martin Cruz Smith — Rose

Macmillan 1996 Hardback, 416pp. Jonathan Blair, an American adventurer, cast adrift in Victorian England must travel north to solve the mysterious disappearance of a young cleric . and confront his own heart of darkness. Half-dead from malaria and desperate to return to his beloved West Africa, Blair encounters the brutality of the coal-mines and the terror of those condemned to work the pits - and very soon finds himself battling against the shocking hypocrisy of a class system he cannot understand. The request had been direct: the Reverend John Maypole had vanished one day in January - the day 76 miners perished - and Blair must find him to earn his passage home. But why was one of the most powerful families in England paying Blair to find him alive? And why does everyone treat Blair as an outcast - even the fiancee of the man he is instructed to find? Everyone except Rose . (ISBN: 9780333632925). Good.