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It is the eve of the French Revolution and England awaits with trepidation the news from the Continent that will propel her into war again after six years of peace. But Lieutenant James Hayter's orders from the Admiralty do not at first involve the sea. He must go inland to seek out his friend Captain William Rennie, who has disappeared into the wilds of Dartmoor.
When he finds Rennie alone and broken down in an isolated farmhouse, Hayter fears the Captain will be unable to make the journey to London. Hayter has his own hopes of a command, but these are cruelly dashed when they reach the capital, where they find the sinister spymaster, Sir Robert Greer is once more behind their deployment. They are to sail in HMS Expedient to the Mediterranean, to assist Britain's ally Rashid Bey of Rabhet, with Hayter yet again Rennie's second in command.
So, unprepared for what they will find on the dangerous Barbary Coast, Expedient and the ten gun cutter Curlew sail into treacherous waters. The odds are daunting. They must make a show of defiance against the mighty corsair fleet of Rabhet's enemy the Dey of Tunis. Murky politics, threatened mutiny, desperate sea actions and imprisonment follow on the sweltering North African Coast, where the rules of European warfare no longer apply and the victor will take everything.
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Greer makes it abundantly clear in a deviously shocking way that he knows about Rennie & Hayter 'appropriating' a stash of gold after their stint in Jamaica. He chooses not to expose them, but to blackmail them into 'accepting' his latest mission.
Secrecy surrounds the mission - ostensibly convoy duty off Tunis - which expands into a rescue mission of the Bey of Rehbet ... or does it? A stroke of bad luck during an action sends Hayter overboard, presumed lost ... but he is 'rescued' by the enemy and incarcerated in dire conditions, pending payment of an impossible ransom.
An unexpected gift allows Hayter's release, but the subsequent failure (contrived or intended?) of the mission and loss of the Bey's fortune, due largely to unavoidable weather conditions, leaves Rennie distraught - prepared to be demoted or left 'on the beach' - but Greer has a shocking surprise in store!
Well-drawn characters, especially the headstrong, capricious and moody master-tactician Rennie, flesh out an intriguing plot-line where nothing is insignificant - fleeting incidents in previous books feature crucially, everything has a meaning, in the near or distant future.
I particularly like the use of one or two succinctly well-chosen words at the end of a line of speech convey exactly the mood and tension in the character, far better than a paragraph would. The series gets better and better; highly recommended. *****
Liked the way the idioms of speech of the day were used.
The author seemed to lose the plot in this one, however.
One character that had a considerable influence in the story vanished into space.
The ending was unnecessarily inconclusive, OK in a serial but not in a novel.
Worth a read if you have read the two previous novels in the series.
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