Excerpt from Golden Hill by Francis Spufford, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It was perhaps because of this relaxation of the usual irritations of the street that Smith, without taking notice of it, relaxed in turn the town-dweller's habitual guard, and failed to perceive, as he reflected and considered, that others were meanwhile reflecting and considering upon him. He paused to admire the unloading boats, where an arm of the harbour pushed up among the houses. He passed into a narrow square where printer's devils ran from door to door with bundles of paper, and smiled on enquiring its name and being told it was Hanover Square, for its London counterpart ran less to ink, and more to ballrooms lit by half a thousand candles. He spied a coffee-house ahead, from which came perfumes of hot bread and well-ground beans, and stopping short of it, did what he would not have done at home, or anywhere he had full conviction he trod the humdrum earth. To try to sift from the unruly cram of Mr. Lovell's paper a suitable scrap to command his breakfast, he pulled out in the street his whole pocket-book. Quick as a wink, one of his followers dashed forward, snatched it, and took to his heels up the road ahead.

Smith had had his riches in his hand. Suddenly he did not. Smith gawped. Smith stared stupidly at the empty hand where money had been. And a document besides, which— But there was no time for that. Smith hesitated—considered shouting "Stop thief!"—perceived a train of likely consequences—shook his head like a man assailed by flies—and set off in pursuit himself, silently, instead. His moment's stillness had given the snatcher a lead of twenty yards or so already, and though Smith's legs pumped and his green coat's tails flew out behind him, the goal of his chase was slipping deftly between backs, round corners, up alleyways. Now the streets of New-York reeled by, not at a stroll but at a sprint; the same scenes, the same mixture of familiar and unfamiliar chequered close together as black and white squares of a chess board, but accelerated, passing at a blur; in fact, some of the very same route he had trodden the night before, but now had no time to recognise, as he gasped, and pounded, and felt the enforced enfeeblement of his shipboard weeks dragging at his limbs, while the figure ahead, jinking and turning, weaving and bounding, drew no closer, in fact pulled ahead. The thief was thin, with long, straight, black hair, and seemingly tireless legs in grey breeches, and bare dirty feet that twinkled as they rose and fell: that was all Smith could tell as the distance widened.

Now they were running uphill. Smith, seeing the grass of an open space ahead, and deducing that every street here must run upward in parallel to the open ground, whatever it was, resolved on a desperate expedient, and flung himself right at the next cross street, then left uphill again on the next street over, meaning if he could to cut the fugitive off at the top. The street was far emptier here, and Smith made himself squeeze out the greatest pace he could as he bolted upward (as he hoped) in parallel to his wallet. There were no more cross streets: no chances to see if his stratagem was working. Bare walls, poorer doors, empty lots. A hammering heart. Lungs on fire. The top of the street coming up. Smith threw himself left once more and gasped his way across to the top end of the original street, expecting at any moment to catch sight again of his quarry. He turned the corner.

Nothing; nobody. Nobody in sight at all at this end. The currents and eddies of the town's traffic all flowed other ways, leaving this street, at this moment, as an empty backwater. Just a hundred closed door-ways in the bright morning light, into any of which, Smith saw, realising the magnitude of his error, the thief might have vanished. He could not knock on all of them. He wheeled around. The green space was a ragged common. A cow was gazing at him, chewing the cud in comfortable incuriosity. Any of the bushes might conceal a thief. Then again, they might not.

Excerpted from Golden Hill by Francis Spufford. Copyright © 2017 by Francis Spufford. Excerpted by permission of Scribner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.