John Rawlings reaches Boston after a difficult Atlantic journey and finds a colonial city divided by arguments over taxation and British rule. His plans for a carbonated-water venture bring him into medical practice, where one of his patients is the patriot physician Joseph Warren, through whom Rawlings encounters the political world of the Sons of Liberty while remaining personally loyal to the Crown.
The destruction of East India Company tea in December 1773 provides cover for a more private crime when Lady Conway, one of Rawlings’s fellow travellers from England, dies in Boston Harbour. Rawlings must uncover what brought her to Massachusetts and which of her secrets survived the voyage. The murder develops alongside the Boston Tea Party, forcing an English investigator to navigate a city in which political allegiance can make every question look like espionage.
