Smuggler

Kent, England. A county where the chalk cliffs meet the Channel, and where the line between gentleman and criminal has always been dangerously thin. Just twenty-one miles of water separate this shore from France, and for centuries, that narrow strip of sea has carried more than just fish. Here, unlike the rough shores of Cornwall where smugglers prayed on shipwrecks, the trade was controlled by men of property and education. They funded legitimate import businesses, attended church on Sundays, and dined on ill-gotten Gains while others risked their necks on the beach at midnight. At the center of this web stands Zachary Croyland, an enigmatic old man who seems to know everyone's secrets but reveals none of his own. Is he a curious observer with a taste for contraband cherries, or something far more complicit? His brother Sir Robert and the two charming daughters add further layers to this maze of deception. James weaves a tale where respectability masks robbery, where the comfortable parlors of Kent conceal fortunes built on smuggling, and where every apparently honest man might have blood on his hands.