The Fox and the Flies - Softcover

Onselen, Charles Van

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0224081535 ISBN 13: 9780224081535

Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 2007

Synopsis

The nineteenth-century was the age of industry. It witnessed breathaking advances in manufacturing, trade and communications. Exploiting the new infrastructure of railways, steamships and telegraph systems, European pimps and 'white slave' traffickers were hugely successful in establishing an integrated global market for commercial sex. Criminal syndicates in cities such as Buenos Aires, Cape Town, New York and London were able to organise the seduction or rape of women in under-developed parts of Europe and their 'export' as prostitutes to meet the insatiable demand for sexual services throughout the Atlantic world. For three turbulent decades before the First World War Joseph Silver abrothel-owner, pimp and trafficker in women on four continents awas central to this hidden world of betrayal, intrigue, lust and sexual slavery. Burglar, gun-runner, jewel-thief, rapist, safe-cracker and sodomist, Silver's notoriety was captured in the most confidential correspondence of a dozen countries in the western world. What those in charge of law-enforcement agencies kept to themselves, however, was how their officers had attempted to use Silver as an informer to infiltrate syndicates bu

About this title

Review:

"The Fox and the Flies is a triumphant achievement" (Judith Flanders Sunday Times)

"A fascinating account of the life of a master criminal" (Glasgow Herald)

"A remarkable feat of reclamation... Silver remains shadowy, but readers who would like a Cook's tour of crime in the world's capitals at the turn of the last century could not do better than this book" (Daily Mail)

"A heroic feat of archival research and a major addition to our understanding of the global sex trade" (Scotland on Sunday)

"A triumph of research and persistence" (Sunday Telegraph)

From the Publisher:

A PORTRAIT FROM HELL. In breathtaking detail, Charles van Onselen recontructs the life of an unknown man - a psychopath responsible for one of the most notorious sex crimes of all time.

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0224081535
• ISBN 13: 9780224081535
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 672