This story, second in a projected series (the first was The Thief Fleet, reviewed in these pages 8 December 2012), invites comparison with Thomas Keneally’s 1967 book Bring Larks and Heroes, which won the Miles Franklin award.

Both are set in the first days of Sydney Town, both deal with intrigues around the lives and fates of about 1,400 souls dumped at the end of the Earth, both spare no gory details of the savagely-disciplined penal colony, and both end with a hanging.