A Statue for Jacob

By Peter Murphy

'This debt was not contracted as the price of bread or wine or arms. It was the price of liberty' - Alexander Hamilton

Kiah Harmon, a young Virginia lawyer, is just emerging from the most traumatic time of her life when actress Sam van Eyck walks into her office, unannounced, with the case of a lifetime. She asks Kiah to recover a 200-year-old debt from the US Government - a debt that goes right back to the time of Alexander Hamilton.

The selfless generosity of Sam's ancestor, Jacob van Eyck, in making a massive loan of gold and supplies at Valley Forge, during the freezing winter of 1777-1778, may well have saved George Washington's army, and the War of Independence, from disaster. But it reduced Jacob to ruin. Despite the government's promises, the debt was never repaid, and this hero of the American Revolution died in poverty, unknown and unrecognised.

Two hundred years later, Sam and Kiah embark on a quest to change that. But first, they will have to find the evidence, and overcome a stubborn Government determined to frustrate their every move.

Will Sam and Kiah succeed in finally getting Jacob the statue he deserves?

Praise for Peter Murphy

'I have hugely enjoyed reading A Statue for Jacob. You have put together a story which is intriguing as chapter follows chapter, and which I just had to keep on reading. It was an engrossing read' - Lord Judge, former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales

'Murphy's clever legal thriller revels in the chicanery of the English law courts of the period' - Independent

'And Is There Honey Still For Tea? is an intelligent amalgam of spy story and legal drama' - Times

'No one writes with more wit, warmth and insight about the law and its practitioners than Peter Murphy' - David Ambrose, playwright and novelist

'It is to the author's credit that this fiction sometimes reads and feels like a dramatic re-telling of a real event' - Crime Review

'Murphy paints a trenchant picture of establishment cover-up, and cannily subverts the cliches of the legal genre in his all-too-topical narrative' - Financial Times

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oldcastle Books
• Release date: Jul 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9780857304186

Peter Murphy

PETER MURPHY, a writer and journalist, has written for Rolling Stone, the Sunday Business Post, and others. He has written liner notes for albums and anthologies, including for the remastered edition of the Anthology of American Folk Music, which features the Blind Willie Johnson recording of the song “John the Revelator.”