Historical crime novel a page turner

Blood & Sugar

By Laura ShepherdRobinson, Panmacmillan, $34.99

.. .. .. .. .. .. Blood & Sugar

is the debut historical crime novel from the pen of Laura Shepherd-Robinson. Although the main characters differ, this novel is set accurately in a shameful period of English or Western history most of us would prefer not to be reminded of.

It is June 1781 and Captain Harry Corsham has returned from war injured, but a war hero. He is married with a young son and about to embark on a promising parliamentary career. However, he is contacted by the sister of an old Oxford University friend. Tad, her brother, has gone missing.

Both Harry and Tad had been abolitionists in their university days. Tad had remained passionate for the cause. He had last been seen in Depford, the slum and port area where the slave ships are berthed. According to Amelia, Tad is in possession of documents that could blow the slave trading business out of the water.

Harry departs to Depford. At the wharf in Depford a figure had been found hanging from a meat hook, badly tortured and the slave symbol engraved into his head. The man is his old friend Tad. Harry is determined to uncover his friend’s killer. The more he investigates the more horrors he exposes, wholesale drownings of slaves at sea, not a problem as the ships company insures all slaves and the money can still be collected with the rich and the powerful and the parliamentarians all relying on the slave trade for the money for their exorbitant lifestyles. There is also the dichotomy between the freed slaves and the slaves still under the yoke, the freed slaves knowing they can easily be transported back.

This is a page-turning thriller. The more Harry investigates, the more he is sickened by what he uncovers. He risks his marriage and career and finds he can trust nobody.

Although Blood & Sugar is set in an historically accurate period of English history it is a fictional work and a brilliantly written crime novel. It is well worth reading the author’s historical notes at the end of the book. —