Informers and blackmailers, phrenologists and dissectionists, lowlifes and murderers in early Victorian Dublin.
A small boy is murdered for no apparent reason. But when Dublin learns why John Delahunt committed his vile crime, the outcry against him leaves no room for compassion. Sitting in Kilmainham Gaol in the days before his execution, Delahunt tells his story in a final statement that is both dispassionate and weirdly unsettling. He is an unconvincing murderer, and his motivation for his crime is as banal as the act itself was ghastly; yet this feckless Trinity College student who became a secret informer for Dublin Castle seems neither to regret what he did nor fear his punishment, and his attitude toward his own life is ultimately the most chilling crime of all.
Set in Dublin in the middle of the nineteenth century, THE MORNING DROP presents a colourful assortment of characters: carousing Trinity students, unscrupulous lowlifes, dissectionists, phrenologists, blackmailers, and sinister agents of the Castle who are operating according to their own rules.
Shot through with dark humour, THE MORNING DROP is a grim portrait of one man’s duplicity. It is based on a true-life Dublin Castle informer, whose crimes convulsed early Victorian Dublin.