The Ruby in the Smoke

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**Title** **The Ruby in the Smoke**
A recent edition of Ruby in the Smoke with Billie Piper on the cover
Author	Philip Pullman
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	Sally Lockhart series
Genre(s)	Mystery, Young adult literature
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Released	1985
Pages	200 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0192715437
Followed by	The Shadow in the North

The Ruby in the Smoke (1985) is a book by the English author Philip Pullman. It was also adapted for television in 2006.

1 Plot summary
2 Sally Lockhart series
3 TV adaptation
- 3.1 Cast
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story opens in October 1872, where we meet our protagonist, the remarkably pretty sixteen-year-old Sally Lockhart. Her father, a joint owner of the shipping firm Lockhart & Selby, recently drowned on the schooner Lavinia when he went to inspect the firm's tradings in Singapore. Because of this, Sally is forced to stay with her distant Aunt, Caroline Rees. While with Mrs Rees, Sally receives a cryptic, badly-spelled letter warning her to beware of the Seven Blessings, a phrase she does not understand.

To try and discern its meaning, she goes to her father's office to ask about it. When she questions the firm's secretary, Mr Higgs, his reaction is instant: he falls to the floor, dying of a heart attack. This further fuels Sally's curiosity, and she shows the letter to a friendly office-boy in the firm, Jim Taylor, a scruffy thirteen-year-old with a penchant for sensationalist writing. He becomes enamoured with the mystery, promising to find out all he can.

Sally then receives another letter, this time from a Major Marchbanks, living in Swaleness, who warns of great danger and asks her to come and visit him. She goes, and is hastily presented with a loosely-bound book, while simultaneously being told that an enemy of hers is in the house, and she must leave immediately. The enemy, she is told, is a Mrs Holland, and Sally sets off to catch a train for London. On the journey towards the train, however, she becomes aware of a figure following her — a woman in black. Desperate for a hiding-place, she asks a photographer if he can help, and he ushers her inside his tent. He misdirects the old woman and gives Sally his card: Frederick Garland, Photographic Artist. On the train, Sally reads a little of the book before falling asleep — it seems to be a tale about her own father's time in India, and somehow involves an intoxicating ruby. When she awakes, the book has been stolen, leaving her with only a leaf of paper which had fallen out. Sick with disappointment, and unable to understand the cipher which is on the final page, she tells Jim about it, and his interest grows.

Meanwhile, a sailor from the East by the name of Matthew Bedwell has arrived in London and taken up lodgings with a Mrs Holland of Wapping, who shortly learns that he is an opium addict. When under the influence of the drug, he reveals details about the schooner Lavinia which interest the old woman, and prompt her to contact Samuel Selby, the shipping agent of Lockhart & Selby, to blackmail him with the information she has received. Bedwell tells Mrs Holland's badly-treated servant girl, Adelaide that she must find a Sally Lockhart, so, under pretence of being on an errand, she goes to the firm of Lockhart & Selby and asks for the girl. Jim overhears her, and extracts all the information he can from her, learning about Bedwell and what he has said about the Seven Blessings, and finally that he has a brother in Oxford who is a Reverend. Jim tells Sally right away.

However, Sally awakes one morning to find that she has been robbed. Mrs Holland has contracted the same burglar to steal the missing page and kill her, but, finding himself unable to do the latter, he himself is killed. Sally has copied the page's contents into a journal, but she is still shaken, and when she informs her Aunt about the robbery, she becomes livid at the accusation. Tired of her Aunt's haughty manner, she packs her bags and leaves the house. With nowhere else to go, she pays a call on the photographer from Swaleness at his offices in Burton Street, and finds his photographic business in no inconsiderable trouble. She offers to take a look at the books if he — and his beautiful actress sister Rosa — will provide her with accommodation.

Finding herself totally at home in the Bohemian household of Burton Street, she tells the siblings about Bedwell, and they are intrigued. Frederick uses Clerkenwell's Clerical Dictionary to find Bedwell's brother, and together he and Sally journey to Oxford to tell him about his brother. He resolves to get his brother out of Holland's Lodgings, and tells Sally he will pay a call on her at Burton Street very soon. Afterwards, while walking through Oxford, Sally stops in a photographer's and asks about the business, gaining a few very valuable ideas.

The Reverend arrives, and he and Frederick extract Matthew Bedwell from Holland's Lodgings, and after a period of recovery, he tells the assembled company — Sally, Frederick, Rosa, the Reverend and Jim — that Sally's father didn't drown on the Lavinia. He had been murdered by the captain of the schooner, under the orders of Ah Ling, the head of the Seven Blessings, a Chinese secret society (or Triad) that were in shady dealings with Sally's father's firm. He went to the East to try and discover what was going on, and the leader of the society killed him.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Sally Lockhart series

Main article: Sally Lockhart

The book is the first in the Sally Lockhart series:

[edit] TV adaptation

An adaptation written by Adrian Hodges and starring Billie Piper was co-produced by the BBC and WGBH Boston. It aired on BBC One on 27 December 2006 ^[1] and on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre as the The Sally Lockhart Mysteries: The Ruby in the Smoke on February 4, 2007^[2].

All four Sally Lockhart books will eventually be adapted for television.

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Billie Piper	Sally Lockhart
Julie Walters	Mrs Holland
JJ Field	Frederick Garland
Matt Smith	Jim Taylor
Hayley Atwell	Rosa Garland
Chloe Walker	Adelaide
David Harewood	Matthew Bedwell
David Harewood	Nicholas Bedwell
Robert Glenister	Samuel Selby
Elliot Cowen	Henrick Van Eeden
Miles Anderson	Major Marchbanks