The Blooding of Jack Absolute
-
- €3.99
-
- €3.99
Publisher Description
The brilliant prequel to JACK ABSOLUTE...
'Jack escapes death more often than James Bond in his attempt to find the traitor in the King's ranks . . . an exciting romp' Sunday Telegraph
'Bernard Cornwell is good but Humphreys is better' Historical Novels Review
London 1759 and Jack's life is easy. A scholar at Westminster School, a master with cricket bat or billiard cue, the leader of a gang of bucks about the Town, he has both a girl he worships and a courtesan teaching him the more basic arts of love. Yet he plans to give up all carousing, sit the examinations for Cambridge, find a career in any field he chooses. If he can just stay out of trouble for one night...
From the billiard halls and brothels of London to a clash of Empires on the Plains of Abraham, Jack's life is forever altered by the tragedies of that night. Through duels, battles, frantic escapes and a brutal winter spent in a cave in Canada, the schoolboy will vanish, and a man appear.
But first he must learn to kill. To come of age, Jack Absolute must be blooded.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Playwright and novelist Humphreys reprises his swashbuckling hero in this action-packed prequel to last year's Jack Absolute. Back then, Jack was a British spy during the American Revolution. In this volume, Jack's parents an out-of-work actress and an itinerant soldier leave the boy for much of his youth in the care of his drunken Uncle Duncan and abusive cousin Craster in the English countryside. Uncle Duncan's untimely death leads to Jack's reunion with his parents and a move to London, where he becomes a raconteur and fancies himself a poet. When the powerful Lord Melbury catches Jack in flagrante delicto with his mistress, he vows vengeance, but is instead killed by Jack's father in a duel. To avoid retribution, Jack joins John Burgoyne's 16th Light Dragoons and is posted to North America, arriving just in time for the battle of Quebec. Jack's adventures in the New World are just beginning, however, as he's captured by Indians, marooned in the wilderness over a harsh winter and reunited with the contemptible Craster all the while wondering if he'll make it back home to England. In Jack Absolute, Humphreys has created a rambunctious but lovable hero who should continue to win fans with each new adventure.
