I finished Joseph Rushbrook, or The Poacher by Frederick Marryat, originally published serially in 1841, and it's a good but very atypical work for the author. It's a rare story for adults by Marryat as a mature writer, but almost devoid of maritime themes (or Marryat butting into the narrative to go on a rant, which is a usually a feature, not a bug). In many ways it's characteristic of Marryat, such as his favorite plot device of having poor characters suddenly come into money, but it left me feeling nostalgic for his rougher early novels.
The Poacher is a short book with many twists and turns and reversals of fortune, almost Dickensian in feel, and Marryat has uncharacteristically tight control over the plot. It's so Dickensian there's a weird antisemitic bit where a Jewish woman falls in love with a rando (Christian) character, sending her relatives into a murderous rage. (I guess I should be grateful Marryat didn't feel the need to sprinkle in more antiblack racism). With a lot of aliases used by the hero and other characters, and a few Irish characters from Galway, in many ways it echoes The King's Own—but it has a much happier ending where (almost) everyone survives.
As Marryat novels go, this is one of his stronger entries in terms of objective quality, but it's not a midshipman novel, it's not autobiographical, and it doesn't draw heavily on Marryat's maritime knowledge. In other words it doesn't have much to recommend it unless you're already a Marryat fan or completist. I know that Marryat in later life actually employed a former poacher as one of his gamekeepers (which was not uncommon, akin to hiring a former computer hacker to provide IT security), but The Poacher has very little in the way of actual poaching, or commentary on the privatization of public lands.
