It’s October, 1708. Playing Captain Hazard’s Game brings murder and scandal uncomfortably close, and Widow Trotter and her friends at the Bay-Tree Chocolate House are drawn into a frenzied game of chance and speculation at a time when the market is unregulated.
Fortunes are made overnight, and ruin could descend in a single hour. People play for the highest stakes, and men of power manipulate things for their own ends.
The chocolate house itself comes under threat as Mary Trotter, with help from her young friends Tom and Will, struggles to find the truth behind an ingenious system of deception.
Once again, she presides over the Bay-Tree with good humour, fierce integrity, and resolute determination.
Captain Hazard’s Game by David Fairer, the third in his Chocolate House Mysteries series, is published on 28 September, 2022.
He’s written about the social background to his books in London in 1708: a surprisingly modern city.
