Reefs and Shoals

Starred review from November 28, 2011
The year is 1805 and Royal Navy Capt. Alan Lewrie is back in all his swashbuckling debauchery, in Lambdin’s latest Napoleonic naval warfare novel, far better than 2010’s The Invasion Year. Lambdin succeeds with high-seas action, bravado, and Lewrie’s characteristic antics, putting himself in good company with Julian Stockwin and Seth Hunter as worthy successors to the popular 18th- and 19th-century naval adventures of Forester, Kent, and Pope. Here Lewrie leaves the bedroom of his scandalous lover, Lady Lydia Stangbourne, for a mission in the Caribbean to destroy Spanish and French privateers preying on English shipping. But a pompous and cowardly senior officer; enemies who are smarter and tougher than expected; traitorous, inept British diplomats; and an unscrupulous American war profiteer complicate the mission. As Lewrie navigates these deadly impediments, he uncovers a scheme to disrupt British commerce and finds the traitors, resulting in bloody battles at sea and sneaky deceptions ashore. Lewrie savors the smoke and crash of a broadside and the clash and chaos of close combat, but is equally adept at subtly goading and insulting enemies, incompetents, cowards, and government toadies. Lewrie is a delightfully randy and irreverent character, the perfect man to walk the quarterdeck of a Royal Navy frigate. Agent: Harold Ober Associates.

November 15, 2011
Lambdin (The Invasion Year, 2011, etc.) spins another salt-spray-in-the-face sea yarn, a tale of Captain Lewrie in command of the good ship Reliant and in pursuit of privateers. It's 1805. Great Britain is at war with Napoleon, and Spain is the emperor's ally. Privateers from both nations prey on merchant traffic. Reliant is anchored in Plymouth harbor while Lewrie enjoys a bit of featherbed entertainment with his lover, Lydia Stangbourne. Then Admiralty orders arrive. Reliant is to hoist sail for Bermuda, then the Bahamas and finally patrol the Florida coast for privateers. Storms and fair winds abound, canvas is unfurled from flying jib to topsail, with Lambdin master of all things seaworthy as Britannia rules the waves. Reliant navigates the reefs and shoals of Bermuda, and then Lewrie deals with the Honourable Francis Forrester, once a shipmate and now a vain Nassau-anchored harbor-warrior. Lambdin's knowledge is encyclopedic, with much esoteric information about Cuba and Florida in the early 1800s, about towns and harbors along America's southeast coast, about people and their lives, about political tensions over America's neutrality as great powers warred in the New World. The dialogue is spot-on—"I despise him for a pus-gutted, slovenly, arrogant, idle waste of the Crown's money as ever I clapped eyes on, sir"—and there's sufficient powder smoke, cannons fired and grog downed to satisfy ambitious armchair sailors. Reliant brushes Cuba, patrols the Florida Keys and sinks two privateers in Mayami Bay before stumbling upon the French privateer Otarie at Charleston. Lewrie, lord of the Reliant and an ocean away from the Admiralty, worries about his sons, both serving in the Royal Navy, his daughter living with his brother, his half-Cherokee bastard son and his love affair with Lydia, the first woman to reach his heart since the death of his wife, all while cornering and conquering a gaggle of privateers in the marshy inlets along the Florida-Georgia coast. Aye, sir. Lewrie's a worthy shipmate for Aubry and Hornblower.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 15, 2011
In the latest Alan Lewrie adventure, set in 1805, the British naval captain is issued new orders: take his ship, HMS Reliant, to the Bahamas, there to engage French and Spanish privateers that are preying on friendly convoys. The novel, as with previous entries in the series, is a hugely entertaining naval adventure ( la Forester and O'Brian) with a different kind of protagonist. Lewrie isn't your typical career navy man but rather a bit of a gadabout, a womanizer, a lover of fine foods and warm clothes, whose naval career is based more on a love of adventure than any sense of patriotic duty to his country. The novel is written as though it were a contemporary account, with era-appropriate word spellings ( damme, fourty ), slang, and dialogue ( Cap'um's on deck! ). Not merely a worthy entry in the very popular Lewrie series but a top-of-the-line naval adventure that can be thoroughly enjoyed by readers who've never met Captain Lewrie until now.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)