Blue Water: the Instant Times Bestseller (Laurence Jago)

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He had hidden his own secrets from his influential employers for years and at a time when the slightest suspicion of treason could be the end of someone, how will he find the man responsible without incriminating himself?

Disgraced Laurence Jago decamps to his Cornish hometown in Scarlet Town, the third book in the series by Leonora Nattrass. Arriving in the midst of a chaotic election week, he encounters some familiar faces from his former life and soon after when a body is discovered, Laurence will be tasked with investigating. The crowd parted to reveal a posse of running men, mouths horribly agape in blood-red painted faces. They were in some strange ecstasy beyond noticing pain or fear as they bore down on us, wildly drunk. But when a suspicious death occurs and the vital papers go missing just days into the voyage, Laurence’s hopes of reestablishing himself with the Foreign Office seem to be slipping away…he raised his snout as if suddenly electrified by a new smell, woofed three times, and then set off at a gallop down the hill towards the town. We could not hold him and we let go of the rope slipped around his collar. It waved like a banner for a moment before he sloughed it off. His plump hams twinkled from us down towards the crossroads where the crowd was waiting. The story follows Laurence Jago, a minor clerk whose life is about to change when he is promoted to work with an American representative. He is pressured into providing information by a rather formidable woman; and one of his colleagues has just committed suicide. The main character here, Laurence Jago, is a well-meaning clerk who is gradually drawn out of his depth – in the world of espionage, rather than paranormal investigations – and inexorably spirals downwards into addiction and paranoia. There is quite an eclectic group of people on board, and that is before a girl eith a dancing bear boards at one of the stops. As the story progresses, they all appear to have secrets. Who can be trusted? But there is a tragic incident that leaves the civil servant dead and Laurence the only man who can prevent an international disaster.

New Year 1795, and Laurence Jago is aboard the Tankerville mail ship, en route to Philadelphia. Laurence is travelling undercover, supposedly as a journalist's assistant. But his real mission is to protect a civil servant, en route to Congress with a vital treaty that will stop the Americans from joining the French in their war against Britain. The comparisons between the politics and the duplicities of Whitehall employees of the present, and of over two hundred years ago are frightening alike and just goes to prove we haven’t learned from any mistakes of the past. I would recommend this one to fans of historical fiction, history in general, it's not so much thriller and as political intrigue disguising a murder.A thrilling slice of pitch-dark historical fiction, led by a hugely engaging narrator' - EMMA STONEX