Alex Preston’s fourth novel is an intelligent historical fiction reflecting modern sensibilities concerning gender and race, though the setting is 18th-century Kent. Goody, the protagonist, is as comfortable wearing men’s attire as she is in a dress; her foster brother, Francis, has escaped slavery. “Winchelsea’s first dark-skinned resident”, he is largely welcomed by the community as a helper in the smuggling operations that bring both riches and terrors. Goody and Francis must confront the terrible wrongs done to their foster father and mother by a vicious gang of smugglers.
Preston bases his narrative on historical fact: Arthur Gray, a real-life leader of the Hawkhurst Gang, is rendered here in beautifully sinister terms. He wears gorgeous clothes and holds orgies in his grand house; his followers, who have names like Poison, terrorise the villages, raping, murdering and pillaging unchecked. Fear is woven into the very fabric of the buildings, locked and shuttered at the sight of any strange rider.
