Jonathan Wild is truly ‘great’: spurning the callow and spiritless ways of ‘lower’ men, he treads his own path to fame and glory - by way of theft, fraud and betrayal. Against a backdrop of such colourful characters as the whore Miss Molly Straddle, the cardsharp Count La Ruse, and the ‘base’ and ‘weak’ Mr Thomas Heartfree, Wild’s passage from cradle to gallows is told with a humour that belies the subtlety of the novel’s ironic themes, and the vigour and sparkle characteristic of Fielding’s best works.