Riveting!

Napoleon’s Run: An Epic Naval Adventure of Espionage and Action (William John Hazzard #1) by Jonathan Spencer

*****

Spencer has not only written an energizing Naval saga around the times of Nelson, but he's thrown in a mystery, a love story and intrigue that sweeps from Cape Town to Naples and on to Malta, between 1795 and 1798. Our hero William John Hazzard, Lieutenant of Marines, has become an embittered disillusioned figure after his Cape Town endeavours and what he perceives as a politically motivated treachery and dishonor on the part of the Admiralty. For me Hazzard is a man in the vein of of Cornwell's Sharpe figure. (Whom I have for ever  been in love with--or is that Sean Bean? Oh my! Shallow side of me revealed!) I'm really enjoying this new anti hero, somewhat of a berserker when pressed. No wonder another of my fav. historical writer's Michael Jecks likes this.

The enemy within? Figures within the Admiralty who obfuscate situations, and lie to Hazzard, sending him on kamikaze style missions.

The enemy without? Citizen Jules-Yves Derrien, known as Citizen Croquemort –the Mortician, Bonaparte's spymaster. A character right out of the excesses of the post Revolution era, a zealot of a man, committed to Bonaparte. A devil incarnate.

Then there's the band of men who would walk through fire for Hazzard. Men from his past and those he gathers to him like a magnate gathers iron filings.

The woman he's always loved, Sarah-Louise Chapel, who as the saga unfolds, is apparently trapped in Naples and needs Hazzards help.

Hazzard crosses oceans seeking Nelson's fleet, facing unimaginable odds and showing his shrewd intuitive skills in his quest to rescue Sarah.

I read the Run over the course of one night into the ridiculous hours of the next morning because I could not put it down.

I was left exhausted and yet salivating for more. A saga wrapped up in Intrigue, heroics and ignoble actions, that doesn't shrink from the bestiality found in war.Spencers's Historical Notes places occurrences and known figures into their historical timeframes, outlining the realities of the occasions confronted and their consequences.

Thorough research and a magnetic story. I'm well and truly ready for the next in the series.

A Canelo ARC via NetGalley