The Lock-Keeper's Gamble
A Canal Adventure in the Industrial Age

About this book:

On the mist-shrouded Blackwood Canal, the water never lies—but the ledgers do. When lock-keeper Thomas Bradley measures a coal barge drawing six tons more than its waybill declares, he uncovers a theft so vast it could bankrupt the company that employs him. In a world where superintendents wear starched collars and never soil their boots, a quiet man with a brass gauge rod and a private notebook has just become the most dangerous witness on the waterway.

From the limestone ravine of the Quiet Stretch to the mahogany boardroom forty miles south, the fraud runs deep: pithead clerks lightening the scales, junction officers stamping false weights, and a corporation bleeding revenue while its infrastructure rots. Thomas has the proof in ink and mathematics. He also has a cottage tied to his job, a wife who knows the cost of asking questions, and twenty years of canal rhythm in his bones. The company owns the horses, the boats, and the coal—but they don't own the water, and they don't own Thomas Bradley.

Atmospheric, meticulously crafted, and taut with moral tension, *The Lock-Keeper's Gamble* immerses you in the grime and grandeur of the Industrial Age, where a single honest ledger entry can topple an empire of corruption. For readers who love historical mysteries with grit beneath their fingernails and justice measured in cubic feet of water, this is a voyage you won't forget.