Customer Reviews

Honour Be Damned (Markham of the Marines)

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The author was obviously influenced by earlier authors. The story has similarities to the Sharpe series and traces of Alan Lewrie. It would appear that his main research was reading novels. It is doubtful that the Royal Navy would have been overly concerned about a past court martial acquital (Peter Heywood, a midshipman from the H.M.S. Bounty, was convicted of mutiny, sentenced to hang, pardoned, and later became a rear admiral). The Navy tolerated and even admired many rogues as long as they were successful (Admiral Lord Nelson had mistresses including the wife of Lord Hamilton).

While action in the book is interesting - the siege at Calvi, action against a French privateer, and a mission behind French lines - the details leave much to be desired. The Epilogue goes off the track. We are led to believe that, in a month's time, a wounded officer left behind French lines has already been transported across France, exchanged in a cartel at Calais, and word has magically reached the admiral in command at Corsica (this in 1794, when a healthy person traveling by express coach might have needed a week just to get across England). We are further led to believe that Admiral Hotham, in less than a month, has already engaged the French fleet several times. The author should do a little better research, both on timelines and technical details, and perhaps limit the side excursions in his stories.

I read this, the third book in the Markham of the Marines series out of order. I probably wouldn't have purchased it if I had seen it on my own. The title is silly and the alliterative subtitle is worse, but my spouse found it in the bargain bin, and when I read the synopsis on the back of the book and the first few pages I was intrigued. I'm a fan of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series, and this book obviously took that series as a model, but that is not a criticism. Connery does a fine job following that template. The era, Napoleanic, is the same. As in the Sharpe novels, the characters, both major and minor, are fairly well drawn: the villains are sufficiently unlikeable, the hero and his men are generally strong and resolute, and they are given a task that is frought with the challenges that will test the men's mettle. On the other hand, Markham is not merely a clone of Richard Sharpe; he is more thoughtful than Sharpe is. Sharpe is more clearly a man of action; he makes his decisions quickly, but Markham frets over the many possiblities. I will probably read at least one of the other books in the series. I would say that I would read both, but that depends on whether or not Connery was able to avoid the major flaw in this work, that is, a particularly preposterous and unsatisfying ending. The ending relies so heavily on coincidence that it almost seems as if Connery didn't know how to bring things to a close.
Finally, a matter of criticism that was outside of the author's control. I read the paperback version of this book, and it was full of typos, the kind that would not have been caught by a spellcheck program. My suggestion to the publisher is that they actually hire some copy editors, so this sort of annoying problem won't continue.