Blood and Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson.
Laura Shepherd Robinson’s debut novel works well on
various levels, but not as an 18th
century crime thriller, as it has been promoted. It starts off promisingly enough, with a grisly murder in 1781 in the
shipbuilding town of Deptford, close to London on the Thames river: the naked and horribly tortured corpse of
young London lawyer Thaddeus Archer has
been found hanging from a lamppost down by the docks. When his sister reports
him missing to Archer’s old friend Captain Harry Corsham and the trail leads to
Deptford and identification, Corsham is shocked at the lack of cooperation he
finds: none of the town’s worthies, from
the Mayor, to Magistrate, to local physician, to rough and ruthless seamen,
have any time for Corsham’s enquiries, still less for finding Archer’s killer –
for Archer was an Abolitionist, abhorring slavery in Britain, and trying to
find any legal means to stamp out the heinous industry in human souls. Deptford and its inhabitants all depend –
indeed, England depends on the human
cargo shipped by slavers across the Middle Passage to the Caribbean, there to
work in the sugar plantations, so that an Englishman may enjoy sugar in his
bowl of tea. What decent British citizen
would question such a right?
As Corsham delves into the murkier levels of his inquiry
his questions unleash violence upon himself, and yet more murders; it becomes clear that it is not only the
local hierarchy of Deptford who are intent at hiding at any cost the evil he
uncovers - especially the voyage of the
‘Dark Angel’, a slave ship that ran low on water halfway home, and threw more
than three hundred men, women and children off the ship to drown. The more Corsham discovers, the more he
realises that a very powerful syndicate is pulling the strings, and the
legitimate industry of slavery will persist as long as they say so. Human misery is trumped by profit every time.
Ms Shepherd-Robinson’s story moves too slowly to be
described as a thriller; dare I say that
there are too many minor characters who contribute little to the action, and
Corsham asks himself so many questions (no wonder he upsets everybody!) that
his introspection becomes a very annoying plot device, BUT! As a harrowing historical account of the
worst sin and indignity that the human race can perpetrate against itself, her
story works brilliantly. FOUR STARS.
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