Book Extract: The Contraband Killings by Lucienne Boyce

I am pleased to be welcoming Lucienne Boyce to Novel Kicks. She’s here with the blog tour for The Contraband Killings: A Dan Foster Mystery.

Principal Officer Dan Foster of the Bow Street Runners is sent to collect smuggler Watcyn Jones from Beaumaris Gaol on Anglesey, and bring him back to London for trial at the Old Bailey. As if having to travel to the wilds of North Wales isn’t bad enough, Dan is saddled with an inexperienced constable as his interpreter and assistant. At least it’s a routine assignment and shouldn’t take more than a few days.

But when the prison escort is ambushed and Watcyn Jones escapes, a straightforward transfer turns into a desperate manhunt. And as Jones’s enemies start to die, the chase becomes more urgent than ever. Dan’s search for the killer brings him up against a ruthless smuggling gang – and his chances of getting off the island alive begin to look far from promising.

Lucienne has shared an extract with us today. Enjoy. 

*****beginning of extract*****

Between 1793 and 1815 Britain was at war with revolutionary France. Faced with the very real threat of invasion as the French amassed ships and troops at key Channel ports, the government called on men to join local militias such as the Loyal Anglesea Volunteers. But the government’s enemies were not only pressing on them from the outside: there was also the enemy within, in the form of radical societies set up to campaign for political reform. Many of these groups supported the French and some were even prepared to take up arms with the revolutionary forces when they landed on British shores.

Anyone who voiced radical opinions was an object of suspicion, especially if they were spotted near military or naval installations. So when Dan Foster and his assistant, constable Goronwy Evans, hear Sampson Kirby a young English tourist, spouting anti-monarchical sentiments, and he is later seen apparently signalling to ships out at sea, they begin to wonder what he’s up to. One night they follow Kirby to the Parys Mountain copper mine, which supplies the Navy with copper sheaths to protect its ships’ hulls from the destructive attacks of marine worms and barnacles.

They followed Kirby to the outskirts of the town, where he paused and adjusted his load before setting off into the dusk. Ahead of them rose the outline of Parys Mountain. The barren landscape on either side of the dusty, rutted track was indistinct, no more than vague shapes in the darkness. No lights shone in the buildings at the top of the mountain, and the open cast was a vast, silent pit of darkness. Sulphurous smoke still belched from the kilns, but no men hammered and no rock tumbled. The wind hissed over the lifeless ground, the ropes on the windlasses creaked, and water gurgled.

They lost sight of Kirby and moved into the obscurity at the side of the mine office while they scanned the site for him. They both spotted him at the same time, walking along the track from the copper women’s shed.

“There must be a nightwatchman somewhere,” Dan muttered.

“I can see a light moving up there.” Evans pointed to a yellow spot bobbing near the pump house.

“He’s on his rounds. Convenient for whatever our friend is up to.”

“What is he up to?”

“It’s time to find out.”

Dodging from shadow to shadow, they moved after Kirby. He turned down the side of the warehouse where they had questioned the storekeeper the day before yesterday. Dan reached for his gun and signalled to the constable to do the same.

At the rear of the building, Kirby lowered the knapsack to the ground. It landed with a thud. He crouched, took something out of it and stood up. He faced the window shutter and raised his arms. Metal ground on wood. He was drilling a hole.

“Burglary,” whispered Evans. “Should we arrest him now?”

“We’ll wait.”

The drill broke through. Kirby tossed the circle of wood away and brushed dust from the aperture with his fingers before reaching through. His groping hand found and lifted the bar with a metallic click. He pulled the shutter open, waited, listened, then drove the drill through a pane of glass. The glass shattered and he waited again, his body tense. No alarm followed so he tapped out the shards of glass, grasped the handle inside and swung the lattice open.

He stuffed the drill into a deep pocket inside his coat, took off the coat and bundled it up. He looked round, prompting Dan and Evans to dart out of sight. There were heaps of boulders dotted all over the mine, one only a few feet away. Kirby hid his coat behind it. This done, he shouldered his knapsack, hauled himself up to the window and wriggled inside. He pulled the shutter closed behind him. A few moments later, a square outline of light appeared around it.

Dan and Evans took up position on either side of the window. Kirby shuffled about inside, shifting crates and kegs. A quarter of an hour passed. The light was suddenly extinguished. Kirby’s running footsteps approached the window and the shutter flew open. The knapsack sailed out and crumpled on the ground.

Kirby pulled himself over the sill and somersaulted after it. He landed awkwardly, rolled down the slope and came to a halt by the boulders where he had hidden his coat. He sat up, blinked, and found himself looking down the muzzle of Dan’s pistol.

“Good haul, Kirby?” asked Dan.

“I didn’t take anything. I’m not a thief! We have to get out of here!” He tried to get up, but Dan shoved him back.

“You look like a thief to me. A burglarious one at that. That means gaol for you, my lad.”

Evans picked up the knapsack from under the window. “It’s empty.”

“Didn’t get what you went for?” asked Dan. “What was that?”

“There isn’t time for that, you dolt! We have to get away from here before it’s too late.”

Dan looked back at the building. “You didn’t bring anything out, you took something in. Something in a keg. Evans – run!”

*****end of extract*****

About Lucienne Boyce:

Lucienne Boyce writes historical fiction, non-fiction and biography. After gaining an MA in English Literature, specialising in eighteenth-century fiction, she published her first historical novel, To The Fair Land (2012, reissued 2021), an eighteenth-century thriller set in Bristol and the South Seas.

Her second historical novel, Bloodie Bones: A Dan Foster Mystery (2015, reissued 2022) is the first of the Dan Foster Mysteries and follows the fortunes of a Bow Street Runner who is also an amateur pugilist. Bloodie Bones was joint winner of the Historical Novel Society Indie Award 2016, and was also a semi-finalist for the M M Bennetts Award for Historical Fiction 2016. The second Dan Foster Mystery, The Butcher’s Block (2017, reissued 2022), was awarded an IndieBrag Medallion in 2018.

The third in the series, Death Makes No Distinction (2019, reissued 2022), is also an IndieBrag Medallion honoree, recipient of Chill With a Book Premium Readers’ Award, and a joint Discovering Diamonds book of the month. In 2017 an e-book Dan Foster novella, The Fatal Coin, was published by S-Books. The Fatal Coin is now available in paperback.

The Bristol Suffragettes, a history of the suffragette campaign in Bristol and the South West of England, was published in 2013. In 2017 Lucienne published a collection of short essays, The Road to Representation: Essays on the Women’s Suffrage Campaign. 

Say hello via her website, blog, Twitter, Pinterest and Goodreads. 

The Contraband Killings: A Dan Foster Mystery was released in September 2022. Click to buy at Amazon UK and Amazon US. 

Other Publications

 ‘Not So Militant Browne’ in Suffrage Stories: Tales from Knebworth, Stevenage, Hitchin and Letchworth (Stevenage Museum, 2019)

 ‘Victoria Lidiard’ in The Women Who Built Bristol, Jane Duffus (Tangent Books, 2018)

 ‘Tramgirls, Tommies and the Vote’ in Bristol and the First World War: The Great Reading Adventure 2014 (Bristol Cultural Development Partnership/Bristol Festival of Ideas, 2014)

by

Laura

I’m Laura. I started Novel Kicks in 2009. I wanted a place to post my writing as well as give other writers like me the opportunity to do the same. There is also a monthly book club, a writing room which features writing prompts, book reviews, competitions, author interviews and guest posts.

I grew up by the sea (my favourite place in the world) and I currently live in Hampshire. I am married to Chris, have a cat named Buddy and I would love to be a writer. I’m trying to write the novel I’ve talked so much about writing if only I could stop pressing delete. I’ve loved writing since creative writing classes in primary school. I have always wanted to see my teacher Miss Sayers again and thank her for the encouragement. When not trying to write the novel or writing snippets of stories on anything I can get my hands on, I love reading, dancing like a loon and singing to myself very badly. My current obsession is Once Upon a Time and I would be happy to live with magic in the enchanted forest surrounded by all those wonderful stories provided that world also included Harry Potter. I love reading chick lit. contemporary fiction and novels with mystery.