On Romney Marsh, John Rawlings becomes involved in a death whose significance reaches far beyond a local murder. Sir John Fielding identifies the victim as a French spymaster, sending Rawlings back into the isolated communities of the marsh to discover who has been passing information and why the dead man was in England.
Set against Britain’s wartime rivalry with France during the Seven Years’ War, the mystery turns remote inns, smugglers’ routes and exposed coastal country into part of an intelligence network. Rawlings must read political loyalties as carefully as physical evidence, knowing that the people concealing the spy’s secrets may be protecting themselves, serving another government or preparing to kill again.
