Written in the style of George Macdonald Fraser s Flashman Series, this historical novel is set in Kingston during the two years the city was the Capital of the Province of Canada. The city was booming. The Frontenac County Courthouse and City Hall were being erected to house a new parliament. The boom seemed to attract every kind of hooligan, imposter, booster, and charlatan in British North America, including the infamous Pirate Bill, who robbed from the rich and gave to himself from his hiding spots in the 1000 Islands. On to this scene strides the rake Henry E. MacFutter, heir to a wealthy beer-brewing family from Montreal, who has been banished to Kingston to sober up while articling to the bar in the law offices of John A. Macdonald. There s the rub. Macdonald is far from sober himself and could not tolerate the man, as MacFutter recounts in his memoirs, just recently discovered deep in the Queen s University Archives by the editor of the Queen s Alumni Review. As the lawyers say: Res ipsa loquitur The thing speaks for itself. I leave it to you, the reader, to be the judge of that. For me, I will only venture to say that I find an undeniable ring of truth to the words of Henry Eustace MacFutter. Being a man of letters and a self-proclaimed poet who boasted of being a friend of novelist Charles Dickens, a drinking pal of the young Winston Churchill, and a pen pal of (and inspiration for) the celebrated English bard Lord Alfred Tennyson MacFutter vowed that one day he would write an explosive, tell-all memoir. When he did so, he always insisted, the secrets he d reveal would shock the country and set right or alight! - the historical record. "