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A man of enormous self-interest but wild charisma, Abel Croker instils loyalty and fear in all who fall into his ambit. And that ambit is the London docks, a place where Victoria’s great empire finds its nexus. There’s not a single arrival here – animal, mineral, vegetable or human – he doesn’t know about.

He can get you a berth on a ship in the blink of an eye, tell you which stevedores have skimmed anything tasty - import, export, contraband...

This might make him sound amiable, roguish even. And that is certainly his shtick, an effective one, a beguiling one. Which is the idea.

Croker is not so much a bear, as a bear trap. Once you have need of him, he’s not about to let you go. He’ll squeeze and dig into people until their entire lives are his personal property, which is about to discover when he is forced to strike a deal with the man that will change the course of his life in Whitechapel…