Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12603 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Synopsis
Matthew Hawkwood, ex-soldier turned Bow Street Runner, goes undercover to hunt down smugglers and traitors at the height of the Napoleonic Wars in this thrilling follow-up to Ratcatcher. For a French prisoner of war, there is only one fate worse than the gallows: the hulks. Former man-o'-wars, now converted to prison ships, their fearsome reputation guarantees a sentence served in the most dreadful conditions. Few survive. Escape, it's said, is impossible. Yet reports persist of a sinister smuggling operation within this brutal world -- and the Royal Navy is worried enough to send two of its officers to investigate. But when they disappear without trace, the Navy turns in desperation to Bow Street for help. It's time to send in a man as dangerous as the prey. It's time to send in Hawkwood!

From the Author
James McGee discusses the setting of 'Rapscallion'

Any town that could inspire such anger in a Prime Minister that he ordered its entire boat fleet burnt to a cinder has got to be worth a mention in any one's book. Well, it was in mine....

Deal was the town and it was Deal's role in the smuggling trade during the 18th and 19th centuries that inflamed the wrath of William Pitt, Britain's then premier politician, and gave me the idea for Rapscallion, the third Matthew Hawkwood adventure; a tale of prison hulks, French privateers and the landing of contraband on moonlit beaches. But the link with the `wicked trade' is just one of Deal's claims to fame. The castle, built by Henry VIII, guarded the Downs, the vast anchorage that was home to the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, and Horatio Nelson walked Deal's narrow streets. Who wouldn't want to follow in the footsteps of Britain's greatest naval hero and retrace history?

About the Author
James McGee is the pseudonym of Glen Moy, the Ottakar's manager in Tenterden. Glen has worked in banking, sales, newspapers and the airline industry before turning to bookselling. His interest in the Napoleonic period dates to his first reading of C.S.Forester's 'The Gun'. This is the third in a series of books featuring Matthew Hawkwood.