Sharpe's Prey (Hardcover)

The year is 1807; Lieutenant Richard Sharpe is planning to leave the army. Against his better judgment, he is persuaded to accompany the Hon John Lavisser to Copenhagen in what is essentially an act of political skulduggery: they are to deliver a bribe and (hopefully) avert a war. But with the French ensuring that Europe remains at boiling point, Sharpe finds himself protecting his charge against French agents and struggling to ensure that the Danish battle fleet is not used to replace every French ship destroyed at Trafalgar. Sharpe is a character we know well and like, and his customary characteristics (tenacity, bloody-mindedness) are well to the fore here, but, as always, the other characters are equally strikingly drawn: Lavisser is a splendidly complex figure, as are several of Sharpe's nemeses. But it's that wonderfully adroit orchestration of action and plot that keeps the pulse racing, with the bombardment of Copenhagen and the massive bloodshed resulting in a truly impressive set piece:

Sharpe, from his vantage point on the dune, could see the smoke wreathing the wall. The city's copper spires and red roofs showed above the churning cloud. A dozen houses were burning there, fired by the Danish shells that hissed across the canal. Three windmills had their sales tethered against the blustering wind that blew the smoke westwards and fretted the moored fleet to the north of Copenhagen.

--Barry Forshaw

Review
This, the 18th in the Richard Sharpe series, takes us back to 1807, when England was at war with Denmark. Sharpe, recently back from India and newly commissioned to officer rank in which he is not entirely comfortable, is planning to leave the army. But he is persuaded to undertake one last task: as 'minder' to Major the Honourable John Lavisser, a man with a special mission, of whom Sharpe has deep, and justifiable, suspicions. As French agents seek to undermine his aims, Sharpe has to keep all his wits about him. Sharpe fans will be well acquainted with his background, which Cornwell neatly recapitulates for newcomers to the series. Product of a Foundling Home and the London slums, Sharpe is a fearless and ruthless soldier, but has a softer side as well. He feels true loyalty and affection for his friends and is easily swayed by love: as he sails off on this new adventure he's still grieving for Grace, who died in childbirth with his son, and he ends it grieving for another woman, left behind in the blazing city of Copenhagen. Cornwell's historical accuracy is beyond doubt, but it is the luminous imagination he brings to bygone events, his descriptive powers and his strong grip on complicated situations that make his novels the magnet they are to discerning readers. (Kirkus UK)

The redoubtably prolific Cornwell, who has rounded out his revisionist Arthurian Warlord trilogy, filed four volumes in his Starbuck Civil War series, and now has 18 novels in his Richard Sharpe British Army series, plus other incidental novels about Stonehenge, etc., takes his hero Sharpe on the Expedition to Copenhagen of 1807. Sharpe, in the hip-hop fashion of Cornwell's chronology, has already fought in the Waterloo Campaign in 1815 (Sharpe's Waterloo), sailed to the New World in 1821 (Sharpe's Devil) and most recently observed Nelson at Trafalgar (Sharpe's Trafalgar, 2001) in 1805. Now, God's teeth, how can it be, Sharpe not only is without woman but also without coin. Although he wants most to sell his battlefield commission for (UKP)450, he's told battlefield commissions can't be sold. Thus he must accept a post as quartermaster-and in addition is roped by the Honorable John Lavisser to carry a secret bribe to Denmark. But all is not well in Denmark, not with the French lusting to take over the Danish fleet. There is something splendid about Sharpe's rugged leadership of British troops against the massed musketry of the Danes but not in the crippled children and widespread death of Danish civilians as the British bombard Copenhagen and set it afire. Rousing. At last count, 12 Sharpe novels had been filmed by PBS. (Kirkus Reviews)

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• Books > Children's Books
• Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > C > Cornwell, Bernard > Sharpe Novels
• Books > Fiction > Genre > Adventure Stories
• Books > Fiction > Genre > Historical
• Books > Fiction > Genre > Historical Adventure Stories
• Books > Fiction > Historical

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