Blue Water: the Instant Times Bestseller

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Description

This is the secret report of Laurence Jago. Ex-clerk. Unwilling spy. Reluctant sailor. Accidental detective.

New Year 1795, and Laurence Jago is aboard the Tankerville mail ship, en route to Philadelphia. Ostensibly travelling as assistant to the irrepressible journalist William Philpott, Laurence's real mission is to aid the civil servant carrying a vital treaty to Congress. A treaty that will prevent the Americans from joining with the French in the war against Britain.

However, when the civil servant meets an unfortunate - and supposedly accidental - end and the treaty disappears, Laurence realises only he can now prevent war with the US. Trapped on the ship with travellers including two penniless French aristocrats, an Irish actress and a dancing bear, Laurence must hunt down both the lost treaty and the murderer, before he has a tragic 'accident' himself...

Reviews

PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR:

'Weaves the complex politics of 18th-century Britain into a gripping murder mystery' - The Times

'A joy from start to finish. Jago is a very sympathetic hero... and Philpott made me want to cheer' - Andrew Taylor

'Nimbly realised' - Financial Times

'A gripping, intricate story of Georgian high politics and low life... Top notch' - W.C. Ryan

Author Bio

Leonora Nattrass studied eighteenth-century literature and politics, and spent ten years lecturing in English and publishing works on William Cobbett. She lives in Cornwall, in a seventeenth-century house with seventeenth-century draughts, and spins the fleeces of her Ryeland sheep into yarn. Her first novel, Black Drop, was published in 2021. Find her on Twitter @LeonoraNattrass