Paperback. Pub Date :2013-11-07 432 English Simon & Schuster London 1812:. For forty years Britain has dreamed of the Pacific island of Tahiti. a dark paradise of bloody cults and beautiful natives Now. decades after the first voyage of Captain Cook. a new ship returns to London. crammed with botanical specimens and. it seems. the mysteries of Tahiti. When. days after the Solanders arrival. some of its crew are found dead and their sea-chests ransacked – their throats slashed. faces frozen into terrible smiles -. John Harriott. magistrate of the Thames river police. puts constable Charles Horton in charge of the investigation But what connects the crewmens dying dreams with the ambitions of the ships principal backer. Sir Joseph Banks of the Royal Society And how can Britains new science possibly explain the strangeness of Tahitis floral riches no…