The mysterious figure from 1870s California known as Major Harry Larkyns has long been written off as little more than a liar, seducer and cheat. In fact now he is only remembered at all because he was shot dead by the magnificently strange photographer Eadweard Muybridge. But has history correctly understood either killer or victim?
The Scoundrel Harry Larkyns, part biography, part crime investigation, lays bare some long-concealed and extraordinary truths, and shows how after a catastrophic childhood, Harry grew up to be a fragile but beguiling reprobate. The exploits of his tragically short life would span three continents and range from a stint as an adolescent army cadet in India, through a louche spell in Second Empire Paris, to his days as a Bohemian rogue in the American Wild West. But what sealed his fate was to fall in love with another man's wife.
