The Silver Collar

by Antonia Hodgson Book 4 in the Thomas Hawkins series.

First published 2020

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4.4(1,699)

London, autumn 1728. Thomas Hawkins and Kitty Sparks have built a precarious home above the Cocked Pistol bookshop, but an attack on Hawkins reveals that someone has paid to have him killed. His search leads to Lady Vanhook, the escaped enslaved man Jeremiah Patience and a buried connection between Kitty’s family and Antigua.

As the investigation closes around Kitty, the story examines captivity inside the household as well as enslavement across the British Atlantic. Plantation wealth, racial violence and the power claimed through marriage and property law reach into Georgian London rather than remaining distant colonial concerns. The mystery remains fictional, but its social world reflects the movement of money and people between Caribbean plantations and Britain.