A hard-boiled private eye is framed for a crime and must avoid jail so he can catch the perps and restore his good name.

	"A Spectacle of Corruption" By David Liss Random House ($24.95)

Along the way, he discovers a web of corruption and conspiracy that encompasses business, government and at least a few temptresses determined to, uh, distract him.

In the thrilling climax, our hero thwarts the baddies after succumbing to or resisting, depending on authorial whim, the sexpots.

This is the standard mystery-suspense plot for the Age of Cynicism, and David Liss hews the party line -- with one key exception: It's 1722 England, and hero Benjamin Weaver must extract his neck from the noose with primitive weapons and no gadgetry.

Weaver, introduced in Liss' Edgar Award-winning debut novel, "A Conspiracy of Paper," is a "thieftaker," a professional who finds what's been stolen and is perfectly willing to skirt the law to do so.

When he's falsely convicted of killing a porter, he must find the murderer before the authorities close in.

Weaver's search takes him through the brutal, corrupt world on the quays and enmeshes him in the devilishly treacherous circles of English politics. Here, the Whigs, who represent new money, are in constant struggle with the Tories, who stand for old wealth and the Church, while both parties fear and persecute the Jacobites, a secret sect working to restore the son of the deposed King James II to the throne.

The parties all seem to be using Weaver for their own purposes, and there's more. Weaver is a Jew and must overcome the customary obstacle of anti-Semitism.

Worse, his beloved Miriam has spurned him, married a Tory candidate for Parliament and converted to Catholicism. As Weaver tries to negotiate this personal and political thicket, the body count mounts.

Never fear. The thieftaker slices off the ear of one conspirator, nearly drowns another in a steaming chamber pot and restores some modicum of order.

Liss knows how to build and sustain suspense, but what makes this novel particularly compelling is its look inside a century that some of us think began in 1776. As we travel with Weaver, we see the sharp class distinctions of British society, the filth of London's pre-public- sanitation streets. Among other things, we learn that:

Elections could take up to six weeks and, since voting was far from secret, frequently included violence; criminal trials occurred in open-air courts, where spectators might throw projectiles at judges and witnesses alike; debtors could be abducted by their creditors to "sponging houses" for up to 24 hours to ponder their predicament -- and see the costs of their daylong imprisonment added to their debts.

It isn't unprecedented for mystery novelists to teach us. Think back to the Rabbi Small series of Harry Kemelman, which featured transparent plots wrapped around stilted religious lessons.

Here, the mystery comes first, and enlightenment comes in a sidelong way, although Liss does provide a handy foreword to help us keep Whigs, Tories and Jacobites straight.

If you can endure a rocky beginning, where Liss jumps awkwardly among present, distant past and near past, you'll enjoy a well-plotted novel that unfolds in a leisurely fashion.

The conclusion follows logically from Weaver's investigation, and it's refreshingly devoid of pyrotechnics.