The Crown Agent

'An assured debut that unashamedly harks back to classic thrillers... reads like a knowing blend of John Buchan's The 39 Steps and Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.' - The Irish Times A ship adrift, all hands dead. A lighthouse keeper murdered in the night. The Crown needs a man to find the truth. Doctor Mungo Lyon, his reputation tarnished by the Burke & Hare scandal, and forbidden to practise as a surgeon, is the wrong man. That's exactly why the Crown chose him.

Dan Brown meets John Le Carré in this investigative and imaginative story of murder and political intrigue... Tom, an agent with the CIA has kept his double life separate with expert precision until he is assigned to babysit both Harper, whose predictable life climbing the ladder of a respectable property company in London is about to change forever, and Kate who may well prove to be the real hero of the story... A carefully layered political murder mystery, this adventurous novel masterfully builds and suspends tension whilst showing that romance can materialise in the most unlikely of situations. While February 1971 saw Apollo 14 landing on the Moon, the New York Times began to publish the Pentagon Papers. The confidence in the dollar was being eroded and alarm bells were ringing in London. At the same time George Fitzherbert, Crown Agent unexpectedly disappeared. Nearly four decades later - the ghosts of Watergate still undeparted - his grandson, Harper Nash is approached by two strangers who claim to have known his grandfather under the assumed name of David Martin. With the help of his sister, Kate, he undertakes not only to find an explanation for their grandfather's strange disappearance but to solve the puzzle surrounding 'David's Billions.'

The Crown Agents Office played a crucial role in colonial development. Acting in the United Kingdom as the commercial and financial agent for the crown colonies, the Agency supplied all non-locally manufactured stores required by colonial governments, issued their London loans, managed their UK investments, and supervised the construction of their railways, harbours and other public works. In addition, the Office supervised the award of colonial land and mineral concessions, monitored the colonial banking and currency system, and performed a personnel role, paying colonial service salaries and pensions, recruiting technical officers, and arranging the transport of officers, troops and Indian indentured labour. In this important book, the first in-depth investigation of the Agency, David Sunderland examines each of these services in turn, determining in each case whether the Crown Agents' performance benefited their clients, the UK economy or themselves. His book is thus both an account of a remarkable and unique organisation and a fascinating examination of the "nuts and bolts" of nineteenth-century development. David Sunderland is Reader in Business History, Greenwich University.

History of Britain's official international development efforts, beginning with its colonial era and then following the establishment of a new Ministry created by Prime Minister, the Rt Honourable Harold Wilson.