Apart from a joyous six months in Cumbria I have lived all of my fairly long life within fifty miles of Romney Marsh yet until I read this book I had not realised how exciting a place it used to be.

The Body in the Boat is the third book published in the Hardcastle and Chaytor Mystery series. In it, A. J. Mackenzie describes a very different world to the relatively peaceful image that we tend to have of late 18th Century South East England. The action takes place during the French Revolutionary Wars when trade across the Channel was severely restricted and most goods were heavily taxed. Smuggling was not only rife but it also appears to have been accepted by most of the local population who preferred the term Free Trade. In those days the illegal cargoes were fine cloths and gold to France; wines, spirits and “vanities” into England.

From the opening pages the book has intense atmosphere. I loved the mood that was generated by the isolation of the marsh with its sparse population, declining harbours and its contrasts to the relatively prosperous surrounding higher ground. Mackenzie also provides excellent detail of banking at that time and of the judiciary prior to the police forces as we know them today.

The book has some excellent characters; Hardcastle who doubles as a parish priest and an investigating Justice of the Peace, Joshua Stemp as his Parish Constable and The Rider who appears in the latter stages of the book. My favourite was the gutsy widow Amelia Chaytor who I saw as an early Emma Peel; just replace the Lotus Elan with a one-horse, two seater gig.

The investigation leads up to a very lively climax. Could it have been better? If so, then not greatly. I have awarded The Body in the Boat four and a half stars.

About the Author

A J Mackenzie is the pseudonym of Marilyn Livingstone and Morgen Witzel, an Anglo-Canadian husband-and-wife team of writers and historians.

They write non-fiction history and management books under their own names, but ‘become’ A J MacKenzie when writing fiction.