Leonora Nattrass – Black Drop (2021)

Preamble

If you’re interested in reading my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available), check it out here. Or you can take a look at my short story collection of cosy mysteries featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now!

---

Review

I was in two minds about whether I would review this, as I’m not strictly sure it is a detective novel. However, if we take Margery Allingham’s prescription—that it should be “box-shaped”, with a crime, a mystery, an enquiry, and a conclusion—then we are perhaps close enough, and it is certainly badged as a “debut crime thriller”. I came to this after The Bells of Westminster, though, so perhaps felt it differently.

This first in a series—followed by Blue Water and Scarlet Town—introduces us to her trilogy’s anti-hero, Laurence Jago, currently of the Foreign Office, but with a growing opium addiction and an unfortunate sideline in spying for the French, who are at the peak of the Reign of Terror. Laurence’s mother’s French heritage has been quietly hidden from his employers, but he must try to save his own skin when an intelligence leak becomes known and the British state apparatus hunts for the spy in its mist, but his sense of honour prevents him from allowing another fellow clerk take the fall. Instead, Laurence convinces himself that his fellow clerk’s apparent suicide was actually murder, and there is something far more sinister afoot.

Although this isn’t quite my time period, I enjoyed the setting and am always a sucker for fiction set in the civil service (as a former public servant!). Nattrass is hugely knowledgeable, as a former lecturer on the fiction and culture of the eighteenth century, and she uses that deep background to create a rich and compelling setting for Jago’s perils and investigations. We follow him through various public entertainments, from a public hanging at the gallows to pleasure parks to animal menageries, and his espionage and detective work are quickly intertwined. The Americans are in town, negotiating, and much of the political intrigues here are genuine, although Jago himself is not.

I really felt for the character, although he is occasionally a little bit of a sap (and the opium addiction doesn’t help in this regard!). His rise in the Foreign Office, and his aspirations to marry his boss’ daughter, is brief and the fall precipitous; his love-rival (and at one point his main suspect) proves to be a better man than Jago feared, and he is eventually instrumental in helping Jago find the strength to solve the murder of his fellow clerk and flee the dangerous shores of England for adventures new.

I think I will certainly try to get to the two follow-ups, but they might be a summer reading project.

See also

These lists capture other stories and characters that I thought of as I was reading this piece. I won’t explain why, to avoid spoilers, but they’re associations and not ‘if you liked this, then you’ll love…’ recommendations!

• The Bells of Westminster (Leonora Nattrass)
• Nic McGegan’s very interesting article on Georgian detective fiction (and all associated 18th-century fashion info!)
• Babel (RF Kuang)
• The Devil in the Marshalsea (Antonia Hodgson)
• Taboo (TV series)

---

Take a look at my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now!