The new page-turning historical mystery from the author of BLACK DROP , a 2021 TIMES Book of the Year. Unfortunately the treaty has vanished, a diplomat is dead, and their little British mail ship is being pursued by warships full of angry Frenchmen and pirates. For more great books in this genre, take a look at Barry Forshaw’s pick of the best historical crime novels.

The many twists and turns kept me guessing and the fabulous descriptions made me feel like I was actually there on the ship alongside the characters. A failed solicitor, he is drifting through life – the office, the pub, a barely furnished flat, lacklustre relationships. Beautifully written, immaculately plotted and filled with more red herrings than the Atlantic, it takes readers on a thrilling voyage of murder and mystery.Neuware -\*\* SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER AWARD \*\*\*\* AN INSTANT TIMES BESTSELLER \*\* \*\* A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR \*\*'A TRULY GRIPPING READ' - GUARDIAN'FABULOUS, A DELIGHT' - S. The narrator doesn't help - a voice less suitable is hard to imagine and he barely attempts to convince you he is a seafarer/aristocrat/civil war era civil servant. Among their number is Jago, of course, along with his dog Mr Gibbs; journalist William Philpott; Theodore Jay, son of American envoy John Jay; his slave and valet Peter Williams; and War Office official Frederick Jenkinson. The story unfolds tantalisingly slowly, sneakily teasing the reader into thinking one thing, then the opposite, until our powers of deduction are as tossed about and confused as any seafaring passenger. The prose was in keeping with the style I would expect for the time, but this made it quite wordy and dull, although the variety of diary entries, letters and the Captain’s log did help to break it up.

Everything you want in a page-turner is here: all the best aspects of a thriller, with twists and turns you're not expecting, plus a healthy dose of sentimentality and the opportunity for a good weep. Rose Ransom, who has the highest status permitted to women under the caste system designed by (real) Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, is busy rewriting works of literature to ensure they are in accordance with the ideals of the regime. It definitely wasn’t for the faint hearted and I don’t think I’d have wanted to be on board a similar ship, especially when I discovered what the toiled facilities were. Her historical note served to place the novel in context as well as providing fascinating details of the Jay Treaty, which was so vital to the plot and what is known of the Tankerville’s 1794-75 voyage. This is Book 2 in her series of political thrillers set in the late eighteenth century featuring reluctant spy Laurence Jago.

With almost the entire story taking place at sea and therefore with a limited number of characters, the mystery has a ‘locked room’ feel and kept me guessing until the end. I found this to be one of those books you keep expecting to find it's feet and give an inspirational twist or novel approach but just never does. This is my first Leonora Nattrass book, but I do have Black Drop on my shelf which I will definitely be picking up soon, given how much I enjoyed Blue Water.

A superb historical thriller’ PHILIPPA EAST, author of LITTLE WHITE LIESDeath came aboard with the cormorant. In Nattrass’s second historical political thriller, it’s 1794 and Foreign Office clerk Laurence Jago, previously seen in the excellent Black Drop, finds himself aboard a mail ship heading for Philadelphia. The journey is hazardous, with bad weather and pirates to avoid, plus a French ship which has been tasked with retrieving the treaty. When the civil servant meets an unfortunate - and apparently accidental - end, the treaty disappears, and Laurence realises that only he can keep the Americans out of the war. When Jenkinson, the carrier of the treaty, dies after an accident involving a spar, it appears the whereabouts of the hidden treaty has died with him.Trapped on the ship with travellers including two penniless French aristocrats, an Irish actress and a dancing bear, Laurence must hunt down both the lost treaty and the murderer, before he has a tragic 'accident' himself. She lives in Cornwall, in a seventeenth-century house with seventeenth-century draughts, and spins the fleeces of her Ryeland sheep into yarn.