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Thursday 13 November 2014

'Foul Trade' by B. K. Duncan



Published In paperback by Oak Tree Press.
And on Kindle -  Digital edition converted and distributed by Andrews UK Ltd.


Exciting 1920s tale of a feisty female who has become Coroner's Officer for Poplar.  May Keaps had been an ambulance drive in the Great War and now she assists and, to some extent, protects the elderly Coroner.  May has lost her brother to the War, her father to suicide and has only her teenage sister Alice left to care for.

May knows her patch intimately since she was brought up there and she has valuable friends to help the enquiries of a female.  May worries that she will lose her position in favour of a man returned from the War.  She becomes involved in investigating the death of a young man whose body was discovered in front of a Chinese-run club.

The dock life of London in 1920 is vividly brought to life with its tough dockers, illegal gambling and opium dens.  May's efforts mean that she embroils herself in the Bow Kum Tong's protection racket and the sale of opium.  She recklessly puts herself in danger's way.

The results of May's enquiries and the effects of her involvement in such dangerous pursuits make a story with a nail biting finale.
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Reviewer: Jennifer S. Palmer
This is B. K. Duncan's first novel but there is a short story about May Keaps as an ambulance driver in 1918 available on Kindle.

B K Duncan, was born on a steam railway and brought up on the South Coast of England, such beginnings were destined to leave BK Duncan with a love of vintage transport, crashing seas, and Art Deco architecture. Following a career encompassing developmental learning and change-management consultancy she made the switch to full time writer, combining producing her own work with lecturing in creative writing in colleges and academies in Hertfordshire and Cambridge. Her two great passions are longbow archery and the Argentine Tango. Sadly, she is not nearly as accomplished at either as she’d like.
Foul Trade is the first in a series, unique in the crime genre in that it features a female coroner’s officer as the main character. May Keaps can also be found in the prequel short story, Faith’s Reward, set in 1918 on the Western Front when she was an ambulance driver. It is available for free download from Amazon 

Jennifer Palmer Throughout my reading life crime fiction has been a constant interest; I really enjoyed my 15 years as an expatriate in the Far East, the Netherlands & the USA but occasionally the solace of closing my door to the outside world and sitting reading was highly therapeutic. I now lecture to adults on historical topics including Famous Historical Mysteries.



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