Blood & Sugar

London, June 1781. Captain Harry Corsham is drawn into a murder investigation after an unidentified man is found tortured and hanging from a hook at Deptford Dock. The case soon points toward Tad Archer, Harry’s missing friend, an outspoken opponent of the slave trade who believed he had uncovered evidence capable of damaging powerful commercial interests. Following Tad’s trail forces Harry through dockside warehouses, merchant networks and political circles where violence protects money and reputation.

The novel places its crime plot inside Britain’s continuing participation in the Atlantic slave trade before the organised abolition campaign of the later 1780s. Deptford and the Thames connect London directly to imperial commerce, while Harry’s investigation exposes the dependence of respectable fortunes and parliamentary influence on coerced labour overseas. Shepherd-Robinson uses the murder mystery to examine how slavery could be both geographically distant and deeply embedded in Georgian British society.