The Letter of Marque

22 April 2022

Territory Rights — Worldwide excluding Canada and the British Commonwealth.

Description

"Fine stuff...[The Letter of Marque] leaves the devotee of naval fiction eager for sequels." —Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

Captain Jack Aubrey, a brilliant and experienced officer, has been struck off the list of post-captains for a crime he did not commit. His old friend Stephen Maturin, usually cast as a ship’s surgeon to mask his discreet activities on behalf of British Intelligence, has bought for Aubrey his former ship the Surprise to command as a privateer, more politely termed a letter of marque. Together they sail on a desperate mission against the French, which, if successful, may redeem Aubrey from the private hell of his disgrace. A nighttime battle with an unusual climax, a jewel of great value, and Maturin’s fondness for opium make this segment of Patrick O’Brian’s masterful series both original and profoundly exciting.

Reviews

"Both serious and light-hearted, true and sentimental, as comic opera can be." — Peter Campbell, London Review of Books

"There are two types of people in the world: Patrick O’Brian fans, and people who haven’t read him yet." — Lucy Eyre, Guardian

"O’Brian’s books are as atypical of conventional sea stories as Conrad’s. Like John le Carré, he has erased the boundary separating a debased genre from ‘serious’ fiction. O’Brian is a novelist, pure and simple, one of the best we have." — Mark Horowitz, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Paperback

9781324020523

140 x 211 mm • 288 pages

£12.99

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