Thieftaker

Bento
Written By Bill McNamee

“Ethan Kaille eased his knife from the leather sheath on his belt as he approached Griffin’s Wharf, the words of a warding spell on his lips.”
- D. B. Jackson, Thieftaker

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Thieftaker is a historical fantasy novel written by D. B. Jackson (the pen name of David B. Coe). First published in 2012, it opens The Thieftaker Chronicles, a series that blends the political unease of colonial Boston with the quiet pull of the supernatural. The result is a story of mystery, conscience, and survival that never loses sight of the world it inhabits.

The novel follows Ethan Kaille, a conjurer and working thieftaker, part detective and part bounty hunter, who earns his living retrieving stolen property for a fee. When a young woman is found murdered under strange circumstances, Ethan is drawn into a web of power and secrets that stretch beyond the crime itself. Boston in 1765 is a city on the edge of revolution. Merchants, soldiers, and common tradesmen walk the same narrow streets while the anger over the Stamp Act builds. In this world, a wrong word can end a livelihood, and a whisper of witchcraft can end a life.

Jackson builds this setting with remarkable authenticity. The cobblestones feel uneven beneath your feet. Taverns echo with argument and smoke. Magic exists here, but it is hidden and costly, woven into daily life like rumor. Ethan’s spells are as physical as they are spiritual, a craft bound by pain and intent rather than spectacle. It fits the time: secret, suspect, and dangerous to those who wield it.

Ethan himself is not a hero cast from myth but a man worn down by experience and regret. His past mistakes shadow him as surely as the city’s unrest shadows every street. Around him, people navigate shifting loyalties between the Crown and the crowd, between faith and fear. Jackson writes with the precision of a historian and the restraint of a storyteller who trusts atmosphere over exposition.

Thieftaker serves as both a complete mystery and the foundation of a larger saga. The social and political tremors here will grow through the later novels, where rebellion deepens and the cost of magic rises with it. Jackson’s Boston evolves from a city in turmoil to a crucible where belief, power, and conscience collide.

It is not the spectacle that endures, but the texture: the flicker of a candle in a shuttered window, the hush before a mob gathers, the price paid in blood for one whispered spell.

If you have not read Thieftaker, this is a fine place to begin. If you have, you already know the spell Jackson has cast.

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Paper Trail:

Bill McNamee
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