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Mark my words, though, this is far more than a whodunnit or a detective novel. It is set in the early 1700s in London, where Benjamin Weaver is a semi-lapsed Jew who, after a broken leg ended his career as a pugilist, is now working as a "thief-taker."
This was before London had any police. Not that police were unknown -- the French had had them for years. But the independent-minded British had no desire for any of the trappings of the absolute monarchy that was France -- especially since in those days the French and British relationship ranged between mere rivalry and bitter enmity.
So laws were enforced by citizens -- either the mob that gave chase when someone cried out, Stop! Thief! or the thief-taker, who gathered his witnesses and brought an action before a magistrate.
In fact, while Robert Peel is given credit for creating the first official London police force (which is why they were nicknamed "bobbies"), the first unofficial police were organized by Henry Fielding, who, besides writing Tom Jones and other pivotal works of fiction, was also a magistrate; and in order to help make the streets of London safe enough for decent citizens to walk abroad without having to wield a sword or pistol just to get back home with their wallets and their lives, he organized the Bow Street Runners, men he sent out to bring in reluctant witnesses and defendants.
A Conspiracy of Paper takes place at the time of the great South Sea Bubble, an era when the South Sea Company tried to horn in on the Bank of England's business of brokering what we would now call government bonds. It was the era when the British stock exchange was first being developed, and its workings were a mystery even to most of the people who invested in the market.
Benjamin's father was a stockbroker, and when he dies under circumstances that might have been murder, there are hundreds of people who blamed him for the money they lost in the market -- especially because he was a Jew and a foreigner. Of course, no one credited him with the money they gained ...
Benjamin finds that his puglistic past is as useful as his family connections in the financial markets -- not to mention his connections from the time in his life when he made his living as a thief and highwayman, occupations that were hanging offenses in England at the time.
Best of all, the entire novel is written in a modified 18th-century style. I say this is "best of all" because the modification consists of moving the story forward at the breakneck pace modern readers expect, instead of meandering off in whatever direction strikes the author's fancy, as writers of the time were wont to do. So we have the flavor and wit of the language of the era of great raconteurs in glittering salons, and yet all the makings of a thriller and a mystery and a rather lovely romance in the bargain.

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