Patrick O'Brian

As Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are on their way home to report their latest victory to the government, they are menaced by those out to capture Maturin for his actions against the French intelligence network in the New World

The Surgeon's Mate (Vol. Book 7) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning, with Master and Commander, these evocative stories are being re-issued in paperback with smart new livery. This is the seventh book in the series.

The Surgeon's Mate

Gavin

Title is cleverer than it looks: no surgeon's mate plays any great role in the story, but there is Maturin playing literal and political chess (beating Napoleon and Johnson) and finding a wife. More than a dozen locations, quite hard to keep up and store the plot in your head.


  He was a handsome man, but no one had ever told him so and he was unaware of the fact; now he was delighted, frankly delighted to hear the news – charmed to learn that anyone could find him good-looking. He was handsome, that is to say, in the eyes of those who did not look for the bloom or the slenderness of youth, who admired a big broad-shouldered man with a high complexion, bright blue eyes and yellow hair, and who did not object to a face that had the mark of a cutlass-slash from one ear right across the cheek-bone and another scar, this one from a splinter, along the line of the jaw to the other ear. It was clear that Miss Smith did not, for when he turned and the introduction was made, she looked at him with an eager admiration...

“seducing poor Aubrey is like taking pennies from a blind man’s hat”

Gothenburg, a melancholy town, most of it quite recently burnt, inhabited by tall spare melancholiacs dressed in grey wool, much given to drinking and self-murder...

The Surgeon's Mate (Vol. Book 7) (Aubrey/Maturin Novels)

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