The Judge Hunter, Christopher Buckley
The Judge Hunter, Christopher Buckley
List: $25.99 | Sale: $18.20
Club: $12.99

The Judge Hunter

Author: Christopher Buckley

Narrator: James Langton

Unabridged: 9 hr 44 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/01/2018


Synopsis

The latest comic novel from Christopher Buckley, in which a hapless Englishman embarks on a dangerous mission to the New World in pursuit of two judges who helped murder a king.

London, 1664. Twenty years after the English revolution, the monarchy has been restored and Charles II sits on the throne. The men who conspired to kill his father are either dead or disappeared. Baltasar “Balty” St. Michel is twenty-four and has no skills and no employment. He gets by on handouts from his brother-in-law Samuel Pepys, an officer in the king’s navy.

Fed up with his needy relative, Pepys offers Balty a job in the New World. He is to track down two missing judges who were responsible for the execution of the last king, Charles I. When Balty’s ship arrives in Boston, he finds a strange country filled with fundamentalist Puritans, saintly Quakers, warring tribes of Indians, and rogues of every stripe. Helped by a man named Huncks, an agent of the Crown with a mysterious past, Balty travels colonial America in search of the missing judges. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Samuel Pepys prepares for a war with the Dutch that fears England has no chance of winning.

Christopher Buckley’s enchanting new novel spins adventure, comedy, political intrigue, and romance against a historical backdrop with real-life characters like Charles II, John Winthrop, and Peter Stuyvesant. Buckley’s wit is as sharp as ever as he takes readers to seventeenth-century London and New England. We visit the bawdy court of Charles II, Boston under the strict Puritan rule, and New Amsterdam back when Manhattan was a half-wild outpost on the edge of an unmapped continent. The Judge Hunter is a smart and swiftly plotted novel that transports readers to a new world.

About Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley is a novelist, essayist, humorist, critic, magazine editor, and memoirist. His books include Thank You for SmokingThe Judge HunterMake Russia Great Again, and The Relic Master. He worked as a merchant seaman and White House speechwriter. He was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor and the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence.

About James Langton

James Langton trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and later as a musician at the Guildhall School in London. He has worked in radio, film and television, also appearing in theater in England and on Broadway. James was born in York, England and now lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sam on April 09, 2018

It’s 20 years after Charles II’s Restoration and the old poleaxe is still seeking revenge against the surviving men who caused his pappy’s head to be separated from his shoulders (aka the fallout from the English Civil War). Two of the judges who found Charles I guilty of high treason have fled to t......more

Goodreads review by Clif on January 31, 2019

This novel is set in England, New England, and New Amsterdam (a.k.a. New York) of 1664 with a cast of characters of whom a significant portion are historical personages. This book brings this era to life and instills believable personalities into these historical characters. In addition to the afore......more

Goodreads review by Bandit on February 06, 2018

Christopher Buckley’s back to historical adventures with his newest story. The idea is that he’ll write one for every century, the last one, absolutely terrific Relic Master was set in 16th, so this one takes us to 1664, the year New Amsterdam became New York, among other things. I’ve always appreci......more

Goodreads review by Kathy on June 24, 2018

Superb historical bringing to life New Amsterdam of the 1660's through the most wonderfully lively characters. This book portrays anything but dull characters seen through the lens of humour, liberally applied wherever possible.......more

Goodreads review by Simon on October 20, 2024

I like how Buckley writes. I like Buckley’s dialogues. That’s basically it. The book is a tour through New England and the New Netherlands during the Restoration era. Learn about how there were lots of forests, that Native Americans abounded, and just how brutal certain otherwise obscure massacres of......more