Nathaniel Parry arrives in Bath to investigate and is drawn into deeper waters than those provided in the steaming baths. In the social masquerade few are quite what they seem, and the higher they are, the murkier their depths. Politicians, bankers and traders jostle for power and the greatest prizes of all are to be won in the exotic Far East. Murder, opium and slaver, not to mention the attractions of the Bath beauties, will tax his powers to the limit but he is as well prepared as he is going to be. He’s got a pair of pistols, a swordstick and his dog.
Dr Alex Kolaczkowski has taught history at schools in Bath and Bristol, as well as in Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey. Her B.Ed degree was awarded by the University of Bristol and her Ph.D by the University of Bath. A dedicated teacher, passionate about all aspects of her subject, she took her pupils on frequent field trips, making ancient, medieval, early modern and modern topics alike come vividly to life. Bath and Bristol are cities very well known to her having lived, studied and worked in both of them. Her expertise in Bath history stemmed from her years spent researching the city as a case-study for her doctoral topic on the development of municipal socialism and the civic ideal in the nineteenth century. By invitation from the Dictionary of National Biography she provided the entry for Sir Jerom Murch who was Mayor of Bath on seven occasions, and wrote a paper on aspects of Bath Non-Conformism for the Unitarian Journal. These research activities helped provide her specialist background knowledge of the period and places in which the novel is set.
Professor Robert Hayes is a full-time academic at the University of Alberta in Canada. Apart from his distinguished research and teaching in chemical engineering, he is a calculating thinker with an interest in mystery and intrigue within a historical context. As a PhD student at the University of Bath in the early 1980s, he developed an interest in the game of Go (which originated as Wei Ch’i in China), often travelling to Bristol to play at the Go Club in Hotwells, and later was a founder member of the Bath Go Club at the Crown Inn, Bathwick Street. During the 1990s he was a frequent visitor to Bath and Bristol. In addition to his passion for historical mysteries, he is a lover of fine wines, single malt whisky, and of course whiskey.
