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Colonel James Colt, legendary entrepreneur, has decided to expand his weapons business from the US into England. In an old factory in Pimlico he starts creating the first mass-produced patent revolvers on a grand scale. But for full commercial success he needs the British political contacts and wars to use the guns - and he will create them if he needs to.
So the scene is set for a tense story of enterprise and violence, idealism and betrayal, set in mid-nineteenth-century London, with plenty of issues that are still relevant today.
At the heart of this novel lie those who work in Colt′s factory, on every level. Some, hard-bitten veterans, have come with Colt from America, full of stories from the West and from the Mexican wars. It is they who recruit and train the largely British workforce - and the relationships between them are strained, particularly when some of the Americans lure the English girls to their rooms. But the working of the factory becomes much more endangered by running brawls between Colts and the rival English factories, by the theft of the weapons by those working for the Irish patriots, and by the attempts of the strong radical elements in London, objecting to both the gun-making and the American treatment of the workers, to sabotage the production lines.
A young lawyer, Andrew Lowry, finds himself torn between his enjoyment of his success as Colt′s right-hand man and his growing distaste for the weapons trade and the way that Colt makes it work.
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