“He now found a strange kind of peace when sitting alone with the dead. The dead were dependable. The dead had no pretence, no argument. If one only knew how to ask, the dead were always willing to share their dying secrets, their last link to the mortal world. They always told the truth”
This is Duncan McCallum, a Scottish physician who has settled in Massachusetts in the febrile years leading up to the American Revolution. I read and reviewed earlier books in this series, Savage Liberty (2018) The King’s Beast (2020) – to see what I thought, just click the links.The political situation against which the events of this novel is played out are complex. The British are determined to hold on to their American colonies despite resistance from a disparate alliance of groups, including the French, native American tribes and – most significantly – the fledgling revolutionary movement – The Sons of Liberty – whose leading lights are Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams.
King George’s grip on his American colonies is, however, tight and wide ranging. Not only do Redcoat platoons patrol the streets of Boston and the port of Marblehead – where this novel begins – but it is illegal to import sugar and other staples from anywhere but a British colony, and the import of industrial machinery – such as the Hargreaves Spinning Jenny – is strictly prohibited. McCallum, however, is no firebrand. He, unlike his lover Sarah Ramsey, seeks a bloodless and civilised transfer of power from Britain to America. His worst nightmare is a violent uprising resulting in a bloody conflict with the professional British army.
McCallum’s work is cut out when, within the space of a few days, two British army officers are murdered. One is found crucified in a shipping warehouse, his eyelids sewn open and his mouth sewn shut. Another soldier is hauled up in a fishing net and readily identifiable despite the work of crabs and other marine predators. McCallum realises that the British army – in the shape of the 29th Regiment of Foot – now believes it has more than enough reasons to turn Marblehead upside down their search for vengeance. His problems become worse when he discovers that Sarah is hiding group of escaped slaves from Barbados, and is hoping to smuggle them away to her property up on the Canadian border.
When the warehouse of a merchant called Bradford – a man fully in sympathy with The Sons of Liberty – is burnt to the ground, with him still inside it, tortured and tied to a stake, McCallum vows vengeance. But who are the culprits? British military, for sure, but acting on whose orders? Are they renegades? McCallum’s relationship with the occupying force is ambiguous; he is made welcome in the forts and barracks because of his medical skills, but can he be trusted? He is suspicious when Sarah receives an invitation to visit New York to meet none other than the Commander in Chief of all British forces in America, General Thomas Gage. Ostensibly, he wants to use Sarah’s rapport with the warlike Iroquois-speaking tribes on the border to foster better relations with the British, and McCallum senses something more sinister when Sarah goes missing.
When McCallum eventually arrives in New York, he finds Sarah safe and well, and he meets General Gage. finding that his medical reputation has gone before him, as the General asks him to do a thorough health and hygiene inspection of the main fort. This suits McCallum very well, as he is by now engaged in an audacious plan to switch a shipload of faulty gunpowder – the Americans are unable to manufacture ‘King George’s Powder’ due to a shortage of essential ingredients – with top grade British propellant.
Eliot Pattison has produced an intoxicating blend of real events – such as the killing of Crispus Attucks – with all the imagination demanded of a modern political thriller. Freedom’s Ghost will be published by Counterpoint on 24th October
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