A historical novel written in a modern literary style. I went back and forth over whether or not I liked the modern style - generally, I prefer historical fiction to be written in a good pastiche of the style of the period where it's set, but if you want to do something different narratively, it's much better to use a modern one instead. As the publisher's blurb states, this is in the vein of eighteenth-century fiction in that the hero is kind of a scoundrel, but he's much less straightforwardly scoundrelish than Tom Jones, who was always looking out for a good time. Richard has a Plan.

And at the same time, you really get a sense of what New York City would have been like in the colonial period. So often, "colonial" really means "revolutionary" and we have to run through the complaints about taxation and quartering, but this is the King's New York! It's just a city on the fringe of the empire, and one that was taken from someone else's empire at that. Coin money from various countries is difficult to scrape together, so when Richard Smith disembarks with a note for £1000, it causes a huge stir and puts a target on his back.

Richard is an interesting character who is largely a mystery to the reader even as a first-person narrator for much of the book, until his background is laid bare. (I have to note that I didn't really connect emotionally with the story until that point.) His match is met in Tabitha Lovell, the daughter of the merchant attempting to fulfill Richard's note and a deeply unhappy, acerbic young woman. Their love story does not end at all as you'd suspect, and the book's ending is both satisfying and unsatisfying.