A King s Cutter (Nathaniel Drinkwater Adventures)
Espionage and the Revolution - In the second volume in this series, Nat is now married - the early promise of promotion has not materialised and he is stuck in a boring navigational job on Admiralty Yachts. Suddenly, an influential old comrade offers him a commission in a clandestine operation on a speedy cutter, where his skills will be put to the test helping the Aristos to escape the Terror of the Revolution. In an about-face, Britain is assisting her traditional enemy, in an attempt to avert the greater threat of anarchy, but has to cope with the potentially worse threat of the infamous Nore Mutiny ... Divulging any more would be a spoiler - suffice to say that espionage and political intrigue make this a very different book from the first episode. Nat is older, wiser and more experienced, but there is still the same pace, tension and honest-to-goodness readbility. In particular, the descriptions are superb, conveying in a few apt words all the reader requires to envisage the scenes accurately - one knows the exact position of ships and exactly where the action is, one is THERE, in the thick of it - which adds immeasurably to one s enjoyment. *****
You can feel the ship moving under your feet - I am new to Richard Woodman s books but I love them. I have actually sailed on tall ships and, when reading A King s Cutter, I was back there, on deck or in the rigging. Great fiction, enhanced by an interesting historical background.