Product Description

The latest book in the brilliant, bestselling Sharpe series brings Sharpe to Portugal, and reunites him with Harper. It is 1809 and Lieutenant Sharpe, who belongs to a small British army that has a precarious foothold in Portugal, is sent to look for Kate Savage, the daughter of an English wine shipper. But before he can discover the missing girl, the French onslaught on Portugal begins and the city of Oporto falls. Sharpe is stranded behind enemy lines, but he has Patrick Harper, he has his riflemen and he has the assistance of a young, idealistic Portuguese officer. Together, they have to find the missing girl and extricate themselves from the entanglements cast by Colonel Christopher, a mysterious Englishman who has his own ideas on how the French can be ejected from Portugal. Those ideas are as fantastic as they are dangerous, but the French are rampant, Lisbon is threatened and Christopher sees Sharpe and his riflemen as the only obstacles to his subtle scheme. But there is a newly arrived British commander in Lisbon, Sir Arthur Wellesley, and just when Sharpe and his men seem doomed, Sir Arthur mounts his own counter-attack, an operation that will send the French army reeling back into the northern mountains. Sharpe becomes a hunter instead of the hunted and he will exercise a dreadful revenge on the men who double-crossed him. Sharpe's Havoc is a classic Sharpe story, a return to Portugal in the company of Sergeant Patrick Harper, Captain Hogan and Sharpe's beloved Greenjackets, who can turn a battle as fast as Cornwell's readers can turn a page.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #180548 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
One thing is as sure as death and taxes: that each successive Bernard Cornwell novel will be as exhilarating as its predecessor. Sharpe's Havoc continues the trend, demonstrating once again why the Richard Sharpe books by Cornwell are among the most cherished examples of historical derring-do around. While the novels are all assiduously detailed, with a precise sense of period, Cornwell knows how essential it is that his hero, the danger-prone Richard Sharpe, is as vividly characterised as ever. True to form, in Sharpe's Havoc we never lose sight of the character of the protagonist and the many members of the idiosyncratic supporting cast.

This time, we are taken to the spring of 1809 when a few British soldiers are stationed in Lisbon as Marshal Soult undertakes his assault on the garrison of Northern Portugal. It's not for Sharpe and his trusty crew of riflemen to dwell on the finer points of politics when they are sent into the city of Oporto to save the lives of two British women who have elected to stay. But when one of the women, Kate Savage, goes missing, Sharpe (along with Sergeant Patrick Harper and several battle-hardened colleagues) finds himself besieged in the city when the bridge over the river falls to the enemy. The English are forced on in a desperate journey back to the safety of the British encampment, but things become very murky when an enigmatic English officer informs them that they will be staying in the hellhole that is Northern Portugal.

Cornwell admirers will know exactly what to expect, and all the heady pleasures that distinguished such earlier books as Sharpe's Battle and Sharpe's Company are fully in place here, with the added impetus that comes from a notably picaresque narrative. All the central characters are drawn with the customary forcefulness, and instead of the expected tension and release that is the hallmark of most Cornwell novels, there's a steadily increasing excitement engendered here that leads to an all-stops-out finale. --Barry Forshaw

Review
The 19th novel in the bestselling Sharpe series is set in 1809. Sharpe and his squad of riflemen, with Sergeant Patrick Harper, is in Oporto on the River Douro in northern Portugal, trying to rescue a British mother and her 19-year-old daughter. The daughter, Kate, disappears, and Sharpe has to find her, but is cut off when the bridge is broken. They join forces with a fugitive group of Portuguese soldiers in order to fight their way back to the British lines, but something happens which cancels their orders. Then Sir Arthur Wellesley arrives to take command in the south, and Sharpe breathes again. It is a great story, brilliantly told, which will undoubtedly sell well this coming spring, and is always lively and entertaining.

Sharpe is back with familiar rough-cut energy in this 19th book in the bestselling series. This time it's 1809 and we find him in Portugal with the 95th Rifles, which brings a reunion with old comrade Patrick Harper. You know thrills must be on the way, and they are. The British army has an insecure foothold in this part of Portugal and the French are advancing. To make matters worse for Sharpe, he has to find the daughter of an English wine magnate before full-scale trouble erupts. Of course, this being Sharpe, nothing is easy or straightforward. The French attack, the city of Oporto falls and Sharpe is stranded behind enemy lines with his riflemen and a Portuguese officer who threatens to be more of a hindrance than a help. Chuck in a mysterious English colonel with some distinctly odd ideas on how to tackle the French, add a new British commander and an apparently hopeless situation, and all the ingredients are there for another Sharpe sizzler. As always we know that the blunt lieutenant will win out in the end, and so he does - but not before the usual run of desperate moments and devilish escapades that come out of no textbook on warfare. Sharpe novels never flag in their pace and there is outrageous entertainment on every page. Bernard Cornwell admits that Sharpe is at heart a rogue, but he's a rogue you can't help liking. No one who reads this book will fail to admire the nerve and verve of Britain's favourite Peninsular War hero. (Kirkus UK)

Isolated but far from impotent, Sharpe and his trusty riflemen hold off vast Napoleonic forces in the Portuguese wine country. With years to go before the Corsican Menace is safely quarantined, there is never any doubt but that intrepid, supremely resourceful Richard Sharpe, amiable hero of 18 previous outings (Sharpe's Prey, 2001, etc.), will prevail, though Cornwell, always using good history and always explaining where he has fantasized, never fails to engross and beguile. Sharpe is every gentle reader's secret vision of his or her own self: the victim of idiotic superiors, the idol of his troops, unsure of his place in the world, utterly sure of his place in battle. And doesn't he go to the loveliest places! Now he's in greater Oporto, home to the great red wine and the great English red wine-exporting families, where Bonaparte's troops threaten the city and such lovely citizens as Kate Savage, heiress to House Beautiful and a port fortune, who has disappeared. Sharpe is on the scene because he and his riflemen have been cut off from their battalion and because shrewd Captain Hogan needs him around for the odd commando task. In this case, the task is dual: find Kate and keep an eye on a certain slippery Colonel Christopher. Hightailing it out of the city as the Emperor's troops invade, Sharpe is witness to the disastrous collapse of a bridge and is near victim himself of a French ambush. His bacon is saved by a band of Portuguese irregulars led by Lieutenant Vicente, a young philosopher-lawyer-poet learning army tactics on the fly. Sharpe and Vicente's united little bands find their way to Kate Savage's country estate, where Kate is about to marry the perfidious Colonel Christopher. How perfidious? Not only has he arranged a bogus wedding mass, but he's busy playing off subfactions of the French against each other. Fool that he is, the Colonel, like the French, fears nothing from the obviously ill-born Lieutenant Sharpe. The best stuff. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Bernard Cornwell worked for BBC Television for seven years, mostly as a producer on the Nationwide programme, before taking charge of the Current Affairs department in Northern Ireland. In 1978 he became editor of Thames Television's Thames at Six. Married to an American, he now lives in the United States.

Customer Reviews

Sharpe as ever!
For long-time fans like me who found "Sharpe's Prey" a bit below par, I'm pleased to say that this one returns to first principles, frog-bashing in the Peninsula; and the author is back on form. If you wondered what happened to Sharpe, Harper & Co. after they joined forces on the retreat to Vigo (Sharpe's Rifles, Jan.1809) and before Talavera (Sharpe's Eagle, July 1809), here's the answer. The Greenjackets are in the wilds of Portugal, where the best Sharpe stories are set, on a mission for Capt. Hogan, the future spy-master. Marshal Soult, 'Duke of Damnation' and aspiring King of Portugal, is closing in. Is all lost? Wait! an obscure sepoy general called Wellesley has landed at Lisbon ...

I'll leave the plot there except to say that it's a ripping yarn (and I've been reading them for twenty years). We meet an upper-class villain fit to take on Sir Henry Simmerson; a beautiful, runaway heiress; and a young Portuguese officer of character and education who has a thing or two to learn from Sharpe. Deja vu? Well, some of the best vus are deja. There have been better ones than this but not many. The atmosphere is as thick as Dan Hagman's tea. There are passages of real sardonic humour, which comes as a relief after the last outing. The action sequences are many and unsurpassed. My only regret is that an old favourite, Sweet William, hasn't shown up yet.

The time slots are filling up but Cornwell makes good use of them. Sharpe and Harper march again. What are you waiting for? And if you didn't understand any of the above, still read the book.

"Wall to wall dead Frenchmen"
Someone once summarised the essence of a Richard Sharpe novel as "wall to wall dead Frenchmen" and there is truth in this. After all they are (mostly) set in the Napoleonic War and killing Frenchmen is what Sharpe and his fellow soldiers are there to do. But Bernard Cornwell's books about the up-from-the-ranks rifleman will also feature a plot which requires Sharpe to use all his ingenuity and bravery to succeed against the odds, a woman in distress whom Sharpe must rescue, and a villain, from within his own side but usually of a higher class, whom Sharpe must outwit and (perhaps) kill.

"Sharpe's Havoc" has all the ingredients but in a well-developed way. The military clashes are well-observed and in line with historical fact (apart from the insertion of Sharpe, of course), and there is a deeper sense of the comradeship of the riflemen and of what war does to people than some of the other books, while both the woman and the villain are real people in whom one can take an interest.

It is a bit bloodier than some of the other Sharpe novels, the violence is not caricatured or sanitised, and the general atmosphere is more intense than some. Cornwell's novels can be uneven in their quality (in Amazon terms they vary between 3 and 5 stars) and some were beginning to fear the series was getting a bit tired. This novel has dispelled all such fears.

Sharpe has his revenge
'Sharpe's Havoc' is set in the spring of 1809: the French, under Marshal Soult, have just taken Oporto and now effectively control northern Portugal. During the retreat from Oporto Sharpe and his men from the 95th Rifles find themselves cut off from the British army, and must take to the hills. Meanwhile, rumour has it that Sir Arthur Wellesly (the later Duke of Wellington) is coming out to Portugal to take on the French. But Sharpe has more to worry about than the French as he is confronted with a dubious Colonel Christopher, detached from the Foreign Office...

This is a novel in the best Sharpe-tradition, full of action, nothing too complicated in the plot, and easy to read (it took me slightly more than a day of non-stop reading). The final chapters in the hills of northern Portugal when Sharpe exacts his revenge are among the best I've read so far in any Sharpe-novel.

By the way, if you're planning to read the Sharpe-novels chronologically it's good to know that, contrary to what it says on the inside cover pages of the HarperCollins paperbacks, this novel does not come after but BEFORE 'Sharpe's Eagle' (which is set in July 1809 during the Talavera-campaign).

So now it's on to 'Sharpe's Gold'. I do love the smell of a fresh Sharpe-novel in the morning! ;-)