Book Blurb:
'An enthralling adventure which easily stands comparison with giants of the genre.’ Peter Tonkin, author of Shadow of Treason.
New Orleans, 1815.
Alexander Charteris – “Chart” - a mixed-race major in the British Army´s 1st West India regiment – is sent to New Orleans on a dangerous spying mission. The success or failure of the British invasion of Louisiana depends on the information he collects. Chart joins an American militia battalion of “coloured” gentlemen as cover for his spying.
His contact is the beautiful agent Bagatelle, madame of a high-class brothel. She is the slave of Chart’s old nemesis Julien Fédon, who has a price on his head for leading a rebellion against British rule on the island of Grenada twenty years earlier. Fedon blames Chart for his defeat on Grenada and vows to kill him when he discovers he is in Louisiana.
After Jocasta and Chart become lovers, she is betrayed and imprisoned on Fédon´s slave-breeding plantation. Chart is torn between rescuing her and fulfilling his duty to warn the British invaders about the Americans‘ strong defenses. At enormous risk, he goes to the British headquarters, but his intelligence report is ignored.
The spy becomes a soldier once more and leads his regiment of black Redcoats in the Battle of New Orleans, during which the British suffer a catastrophic defeat. Ordered to retreat with the defeated army, Chart must make a fateful decision.
Leave the Army, and risk being shot as a deserter, or venture behind enemy lines to rescue the woman he loves and eliminate Fédon.
Timothy Ashby is the author of the Storm of War series and Time Fall. He is also the author of the non-fiction titles Elizabethan Secret Agent: The Untold Story of William Ashby (1536-1593) and The Bear in the Back Yard: Moscow´s Caribbean Strategy.
Book Buy Link: https://geni.us/MCqvue
Author Bio:
I explore the nuances of history through fiction and non-fiction. Visit my web site at www.timashbybooks.com
I've always had a passion for history … and adventure. My formative years were spent on the Caribbean island of Grenada, where I rarely attended school, spending my days indulging in archaeology, sailing, diving and exploring. I spent my 21st birthday partying at the British Army’s Jungle Warfare Training camp – “Hummingbird Cottage” in Belize, and later I held a Top Secret security clearance while working throughout Latin America and the Caribbean on counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism operations with the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).
To the surprise of family and friends (not to mention myself), I eventually added the alphabet soup of PhD, JD and MBA after my name, became a senior official in the US government, and spent the following years as an international lawyer and entrepreneur, during which time I rose early and spent weekends to indulge another passion - writing. During that time, I published four books and over 100 articles including scholarly pieces on Caribbean colonial history - “Fedon’s Rebellion” (Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 1984) [link] -and Scottish history - “Walsingham and the Witch: England´s Failed Attempt to Pacify King James VI” (History Scotland, August-September 2021) [link]. I also wrote for the Harvard International Review, The New York Times, US Naval Institute Proceedings and the RUSI Journal.
I'm now devoting 100 percent of my time to building my literary career. My narrative non-fiction biography, Elizabethan Secret Agent: The Untold Story of William Ashby (1536-1593) will be released in hardback on 30 March 2022 by Scotland Street Press, Edinburgh (www.scotlandstreetpress.com). I have just completed The King´s Black Ranger, an Action/Adventure novel set in the 18th century featuring a mixed-raced hero who overcomes overwhelming obstacles to succeed as a British military officer - think of a black "Sharpe" a la Bernard Cornwell´s famous series. The King's Back Ranger will be published in early 2022 by Sharpe Books (www.sharpebooks.com), along with re-issues of my Seth Armitage thrillers Devil´s Den and In Shadowland.
Editorial Review:
Previous readers of ''Ranger - Storm of War'' by Timothy Ashby will already be acquainted with the never dull life and times of Alexander Maynall Charteris, or 'Chart' as he is commonly known. They will be delighted to welcome him back in this, his latest outing. In ''Desperate Valour'' there is, again, never a dull moment for Chart - and with a strong hint of a third book to come in the ending. Here, Ashby ticks all the necessary boxes: with the swashbuckling hero himself, a desperate and beautiful woman in distress, a dedicated group of loyal and trustworthy friends and an implacable villain and sworn enemy. ''Desperate Valour'' contains all the necessary ingredients of a successful adventure story in the style of great masters of the genre such as the ''Kidnapped'' of Robert Louis Stevenson or ''The thirty Nine Steps'' of John Buchan. It needs also to be said that Ashby displays a truly meticulous eye for the facts and the details of a military campaign [in this case - as a backdrop - the truly textbook botching of the British Campaign against New Orleans in late 1814 and early 1815] and possesses the ability to take these unadulterated facts and transform them into a gripping narrative!
For those unaware of Chart's previous and highly varied life, Ashby brings us up to speed early on. Chart is the only son of an English Baronet and a black carib slave who died in childbirth on his plantation on the West Indian island of Grenada. Taken to England by his father, he is raised in both London and Leicestershire; an idyllic existence as a young aristocrat until a brutal awakening to reality in Westminster School which makes 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' seem almost like a Rest Cure! His father is murdered by Chart's vicious cousin [ Ashby is something of an expert in his portraiture of villains], who also makes a slave of him on that same Grenada plantation before hostilities in a vicious conflict between the French and the British result in his liberation and a considerable improvement in his fortunes.
On August 24th 1814, Alexander Maynall Charteris, Major and Adjutant of the First West Indies Regiment of Foot and appointed to that position by his old school friend and companion in arms Lord Hugh Drummond [ soon himself to be appointed Commander of Land Forces for the campaign to seize New Orleans in recently purchased Louisiana] is present with the occupying British Army in the now aflame American Presidential Mansion [the White House] in the American Capital of Washington. He is accompanied by his old comrade, the fearsome six and a half foot Fulani tribesman, Sori. Now himself a Sergeant Major in the same regiment, Sori is truly a fearsome sight with his filed teeth, tribal scars and missing ear! Chart is summoned to the presence of a one armed and one eyed Peninsular War veteran, Captain Heselrige Head of Military Intelligence, who reveals to Chart a secret mission entrusted to him by Lord Hugh Drummond himself. The mission relayed to him by Hesilrige is hair raising! Taking full advantage of his appearance as a 'man of colour' and his fluent French, Chart, now aged 41, is instructed to pose as a refugee from Saint Domingue. As an 'intelligencer' he is further ordered to infiltrate the American lines at New Orleans, gather military intelligence and, at the same time foment insurrection amongst the mixed population who the British fondly and erroneously believe to be anti American. Britain, at war with the infant Republic since 1812, is anxious to maintain the Republic as a minor regional power by limiting its expansion to the west. New Orleans, on the mighty Mississippi river and near to the Gulf of Mexico is believed to be the key of American trade all the way to Canada. While peace negotiations are progressing in Europe, the British are determined to seize the city before peace is declared. Chart is commanded to make contact with their chief spy, a person known as 'Bagatelle' and identify himself by reciting some lines from Robert Burns. He is provided with ample funds for the operation, sufficient to claim he is seeking to buy a plantation for himself.
To add further sauce to the dish, Chart is alerted to the possible existence in New Orleans of an old and bitter enemy. Readers of the previous book 'Ranger' will be fully aware of the truly evil Julien Fédon, a former revolutionary General on the island of Grenada and a war criminal and mass murderer with a high price on his head, dead or alive. Twenty years later he is reported now to be living somewhere in Louisiana, using the alias of Jacques Fouché. Tracking him down and exacting revenge is an additional attraction to Chart. A series of curious events, none of them - including capture by pirates - planned, bring Chart and his companion Sori finally to the city of New Orleans, a city gripped by rumour and war fever and expecting an imminent full British attack. When Chart finally tracks down 'Bagatelle', his spy contact and delivers his lines from Robert Burns, he is disconcerted to discover that 'Bagatelle' is in fact a beautiful and alluring owner of one of the finest brothels in the city! Prior to meeting him, Bagatelle had taken a long, hard and appraising look at herself:
......''She stood in front of a full length looking glass and let the gown fall from her shoulders.....[she examined] her body critically as she did for the women who worked for her when they arrived for prospective employment. Large breasts still firm, buttocks tight; skin like fresh milk, with a sprinkling of freckles on her shoulders. She drew closer, staring into the wide, green eyes, before drawing back to examine the perfect retrousse nose, the full lips, the tendrils of dark red hair. Was she imagining the faint lines around her eyes, a crease or two on her forehead? Still, not bad for age thirty two........''
in giving his description of who he is and his background, Chart mentions the name of Julien Fédon. At the name of the man, Bagatelle - real name Jocasta - grows pale and feels faint. We come to know of Jocasta's very complicated and pitifully hard previous history, and of the nature of her connection to the man. There is a history linking the two here, and it is a very unhappy one! The action of 'True Valour' is constant and thrilling and readers will at no point feel that they being short changed. In the course of it Chart is obliged to join a locally raised militia, splendidly named ''D'Aquin's Battalion of Free Men of Color''. Becoming a trusted member of this organisation allows Chart to carry out reconnaissance and spying missions and to locate the man now calling himself Jacques Fouché on a small slave manned plantation near New Orleans. It also enable him to set out on a campaign of wooing the delectable Jocasta whilst Sori sets about attempting to foment insurrection amongst the black slave population. Both Chart and Jocasta are cautious in their growing relationship:
''He had grown used to Bagatelle's distracting beauty over the past month, as much as any man could become accustomed to such an alluring woman. He often thought about bedding her, but the sixth sense that had kept him alive over the years also made him sensitive to her wariness. As a man who had enjoyed more than a fair share of conquests, he sensed that she was as intrigued by him as he was by her, but surmised that her tough exterior was brittle, concealing a wounded heart and soul....Like his.... Not yet, he thought, a frontal assault over the ramparts won't succeed with this woman.''
Perhaps inevitably, the British spy ring is uncovered. Chart and Sori are forced to flee to the British lines and back to the First West Indies Regiment of Foot and Jocasta and her young daughter fall into the clutches of the evil Julien Fédon and a truly unpleasant existence and uncertain future.
Ashley's bird's eye view of the whole protracted campaign leading to the ultimate debacle of the final battle of New Orleans on January 8th 1815 after much sparring and disastrous movements for position, by which time a peace treaty has already been signed in far off Europe, is magisterial. It is not for this reviewer to outline this campaign, for Ashby carries out this task himself with a true skill and flair in a compelling and highly readable account. The overall Commander of the British forces, many of them seasoned veterans of the Peninsular War, Vice Admiral Cochrane, is extraordinary for his sheer ineptness, inability to read the true situation, pig headedness and, ultimately, his callousness. Chart's old friend, Hugh Drummond, the Commander of the land forces, is effectively sidelined, his hands tied. In the space of a very short time, Chart, who predictably is at the heart of the action, witnesses the total confounding of an army he had held to be invincible and the loss of many friends and comrades; beaten by a ramshackle, inexperienced and woefully ill equipped army led by a peppery, irascible and rake thin old man suffering from dysentry, General Andrew Jackson, known to all as 'Old Hickory'. At the final reckoning, not taking into account the many dead through exposure [the weather being truly atrocious] and sickness, the British Army was to lose three Generals, eight Colonels, ninety officers and two thousand other ranks. the First West Indies Regiment of Foot has served in the thick of the action and suffered greatly. Fédon, incensed and fuelled by his intense hatred of the British, has been very active at the American ramparts and has proved himself to be an expert sniper time and time again, believing that he has even claimed his old enemy Chart as a victim. Ashby pauses to offer the reader a profile of the man Julien Fédon:
''All three of his most abominated enemies were here: The White Milord [Hugh Drummond ], the colored bastard who thought he was an English gentleman, [Chart], and the African [Sori], who fancied himself as a Fulani Prince too good to be a slave and serve the Revolution. It never occurred to him that Hugh, Chart and Sori were like the racial trinity that had produced him and which lay at the heart of the resentment that had consumed him since his birth on a West Indian plantation, the son of a cruel Frenchman and an abused black slave mother. In Grenada, he had been a second-class person despite his status as the owner of a plantation and over one hundred slaves. His rebellion in 1795, ostensibly under the banner of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, was really launched to assuage his pride and satisfy his ego.''
Bearing an unsightly blot on its military reputation and despite acts of extraordinary bravery, the once proud British Army retreats to safer ground. Chart, however, has two further objectives to fulfil before he can turn his back on the ill fated Louisiana campaign, even if it means he must commit the crime of desertion and leave his beloved regiment of which he is so justifiably proud. ....''after the catastrophe of New Orleans, Chart's obedience had withered to the point of extinguishment''....... He must settle his account with Julien Fédon, if indeed, he still lived, and he must rescue, if he could, his own particular damsel in distress, Jocasta,' the accomplished spy 'Bagatelle'.
''Jo had been in his thoughts since their parting a month ago, and he had forcefully suppressed them. Because of their backgrounds as cultivated people caught between the worlds of Africa and Europe, to which neither could ever fully belong. They had discovered a rare empathy. Love? in the cynicism that he
thought Jo shared, Chart scoffed at the concept, although in his soul he recognised the possibility.
Timothy Ashby is truly to be congratulated not only in his evocation of an age, but also in the creation of a highly unusual hero for his times. If there are indeed further books to come in this series it is to be hoped that he can maintain his already impressively high standards.
*****
“Desperate Valour” by Timothy Ashby receives 4.5 stars from The Historical Fiction Company
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