Portraits of Pretence
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An elderly French artist is found dead in his rooms in London clutching a miniature portrait of a little girl. Intrigued, Constable Sam Plank delves into the world of art dealing and finds himself navigating the fragile post-war relationship between England and France. What is the link between this and the recent attacks on customs officers in London Docks? And will a beautiful mademoiselle put paid to Martha Plank’s matchmaking? In this fourth novel in the Sam Plank series, set in the chilly spring of 1827, Plank and his junior constable William Wilson meet Frenchmen in London and daring blockademen in Kent to uncover smuggling and even more dangerous ambitions.
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I have been in love with words ever since I realised, at age three, that those squiggles on the page actually meant something. I edited the school newspaper (is here the place to confess that I was also the author of the section giving all the gossip on who was going out with whom?) and did lots more reading and writing at university (where, of course, I studied English).
For twenty-five years I ran my own anti-money laundering consultancy, which gave me almost limitless opportunity to write about my very favourite subject: money laundering. And the obsession with understanding the mechanics and motivations of financial crime has only grown.
I have spent years haunting the streets of Regency London, in the company of magistrates' constable Sam Plank. He is the narrator of my series of historical financial crime novels set in consecutive years in the 1820s - just before Victoria came to the throne, and in the policing period after the Bow Street Runners and before the Metropolitan Police.
The fourth Sam Plank novel - "Portraits of Pretence" - was given the "Book of the Year 2017" award by influential book review website Discovering Diamonds. And the fifth - "Faith, Hope and Trickery" - was shortlisted for the Selfies Award 2019.
And I am now researching the first in a new series set in Cambridge in the 1820s, narrated by a university constable called Gregory Hardiman.
