<p><strong><em>Captain Hazard¿s Game</em></strong><em>,</em> third in the <em>Chocolate House Mysteries</em> series, conjures up the vibrant life of early eighteenth-century gamesters and money-men, a world of deception where risk could bring huge rewards ¿ especially when you turned the stock-market by false news or shortened the odds by cheating. It was a scene where all was in hazard and life lived on the edge.</p><p>The book weaves its classic murder mystery around actual events of October 1708, and we move among a rich cast of characters, both in Vandernan¿s gaming-house, Covent Garden, and the notorious Exchange Alley.</p><p>Playing <strong><em>Captain Hazard¿s Game </em></strong>brings murder and scandal uncomfortably close, and Widow Trotter and her friends at the Bay-Tree are drawn into a frenzied game of chance and speculation at a time when the market was unregulated. Fortunes were made overnight, and ruin could descend in a single hour. People played for the highest stakes,