A King's Trade
An Alan Lewrie naval adventure
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4.3 • 21 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Another thrilling and powder-packed instalment of this classic naval adventure series.
After yellow fever decimated the crew of Alan Lewrie’s HMS Proteus, it had seemed like a good idea to abscond with a dozen slaves from a Jamaican plantation to help man the frigate. But two years later, Lewrie is suspected of the deed. Slave stealing is a hanging offence, and suddenly his neck is at risk of a fatal stretching. Once Lewrie has escaped to England, the master foreign office spy, Zachariah Twigg, arranges for a long voyage even further out of the law’s reach, to Cape Town and India as escort to an East India Company convoy.
At the Cape of Good Hope a British circus and theatre troupe also joins the party. With the arrival of the seductive but deadly archer, Eudoxia DurschenkoIt, it will take all Lewrie’s shrewd guilt, wile and steely self-control to keep his breeches chastely buttoned to avoid even more trouble...
A King’s Trade, book thirteen in The Alan Lewrie Naval Adventures, is perfect for fans of David McDine, Bernard Cornwell and Patrick O’Brian.
‘You could get addicted to this series. Easily.’ New
York Times Book Review
‘The best naval series since C. S. Forester . . . Recommended.’ Library
Journal
‘Fast-moving. . . A hugely likeable hero, a huge cast of sharply drawn supporting characters: there's nothing missing. Wonderful stuff.’ Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The 13th title in Lambdin's popular series finds salacious Royal Navy captain Alan Lewrie in hot water for "liberating" a dozen slaves from their Caribbean plantation and putting them to work on his ship, the HMS Proteus. Facing the prospect of court martial and a civil trial, Lewrie reluctantly agrees when Zachariah Twigg of the Foreign Office suggests a scheme that might save his career: recasting the incorrigible captain as an abolitionist hero. Noting that Lewrie is "a much easier man to extol at long-distance," Twigg arranges for him to convoy some merchantmen and an unlikely floating Russian circus between St. Helena and Cape Town. As usual, Lambdin (The Captain's Vengeance) provides realistic detail of naval life in the late 18th century, but here the plot is slender and the action brief and sporadic. The circus ship offers a potential romantic interest in an exotic "raven-haired wench" named Eudoxia, but nothing comes of it. There are two skirmishes with French raiders the second a decisive victory for Lewrie. Even so, the cloud over Lewrie's career lingers, perhaps to be dissipated in the next title in a series that has proven popular with fans of nautical fiction.
