Barnaby Rudge – Charles Dickens

This is a curious, broken-backed novel. The first half is a reasonably interesting family melodrama, but then there is a sudden five year hiatus and we pick up the story in time for the Gordon Riots, in which anti-Catholic mobs burned down half of London. The odd structure rather wrecks the plot (which is largely irrelevant anyway) but the riots themselves are superbly executed.