A Trade of Colours (Paperback)

Paperback. London, 1754. The war has not started yet. The spying already has.The Thames gives up its dead on its own schedule. This one surfaces on a Thursday, three days gone: a gentleman of the Navy Board, well dressed, well connected, his pockets turned out and his skull broken in a place no falling man's skull breaks. The coroner's jury sits an afternoon, returns a verdict of misadventure, and the river closes over the business like water over a stone.Lieutenant Peregrine Thornton, a week home from three years in the Caribbean, is the only man in London who will not let it go. The dead man had known him since he was twelve. And the details will not lie down. Not one of them is impossible on its own. All of them together are.What he finds, pulling gently at that thread, is not a murder. It is an appetite.Something has been feeding on the Navy for years. The secrets go out quietly, one at a time, and nothing ever seems to happen - no scandal, no arrest, no sign at all except an enemy that grows a little stronger each season while London congratulates itself on the peace. Nobody has noticed. Nobody is meant to.So Perry builds a trap of his own. It needs a lie big enough to be believed, an admiral willing to stake what remains of his name, and one man standing out in the open where the enemy can see him.The trap will work. That was never the danger.The danger is who walks into it. The men on the other side are not thieves after papers. They are professionals, and they are not stealing secrets so much as arranging them - setting the pieces for a war that will be fought on five continents and every ocean, and that no one in London has thought to name yet. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.…