Synopsis "Britannia's Morass: The Dawlish Chronicles September - December 1884"
This is the tenth volume in the Dawlish Chronicles Series 1884: Florence Dawlish remains in Britain when her husband, Captain Nicholas Dawlish, leaves for service in the Sudan. She faces months of worry about him but she'll cope by immersing herself in welfare work for Royal Navy seamen's families at Portsmouth. It'll be a dull but worthy time . . .. . . until the suicide of a middle-aged widow whom Florence respects. Left wealthy by her husband, this lady died a pauper, beggared within a few months, how and by whom, is not known. The widow's legal executor isn't interested and the police have other concerns. Lacking close family, she'll be soon forgotten.But not by Florence. Someone was responsible and there must be retribution. And getting justice will demand impersonation, guile and courage.Florence doesn't hesitate to investigate blackmail and fraud in fashionable London. But a single wrong decision in circumstances far removed from that world plunges her into an ever-deepening morass, where loyalty to Britain and to seamen who served with her husband raises terrifying dilemmasOld friends support her but old allies who offer help may have different, and sinister, agendas. Higher stakes are involved than she had ever anticipated. In a time of shifting international alliances, in which not all the enemies she faces are British, she can be little more than a pawn. And pawns are often sacrificed . . .Britannia's Morass plays out against a backdrop of poverty and opulence, of courtroom drama and political assassination, of subterfuge, treachery and espionage. It runs in parallel with Britannia's Gamble, which details Florence's husband Nicholas's service in the Sudan. And the challenges she faces are no less deadly than his.This volume includes the bonus short story Britannia's Collector, which tells of Nicholas Dawlish's service as a young naval officer in a gunvessel operating off the coast of South America in 1866.Why The Dawlish Chronicles Series? "I've enjoyed historical naval fiction since I was introduced to C.S. Forester's Hornblower books when I was a boy," says author Antoine Vanner. "I've never tired since of stories of action and adventure by land and by sea. The Napoleonic era has however come to dominate the war and military fiction genre but the century that followed it was one no less exciting, an added attraction being the arrival and adoption of so much new technology. I've reflected this in the Dawlish Chronicles and for this reason I'm pleased that nautical author Joan Druett has described me as 'The Tom Clancy of historical naval fiction.' My novels have as their settings actual events of the international power-games of the period and real-life personalities often play significant roles."In many of the volumes of this series, Nicholas Dawlish's wife Florence (first met in Britannia's Wolf) plays a significant role. In two of them - Britannia's Amazon, and now Britannia's Morass - she is the main protagonist, acting independently of her absent husband. Clever, compassionate, courageous and fiercely loyal, she faces - and triumphs over - the suffocating social prejudices of the late Victorian era for having once been a servant. When faced with injustice or exploitation she is not prepared to stand aside and the battles she accepts are no less dangerous than her husband's.
