Nicholas Fallon is having an interesting year.

It's 1796, and Fallon is fairly content with his life as a privateer on the schooner Sea Dog, based out of Bermuda. Then things start happening quickly, beginning with the lucky happenstance that leads him to capture a French sloop carrying important information -- that Spain has signed an alliance with Britain's great enemy, France. Fallon uses that leverage to capture another French ship before limping home to Bermuda.

There, his patron -- the wealthy salt merchant Ezra Somers -- has a proposal that could greatly change Fallon's fortunes. More immediately, Somers' daughter Elinore, with whom Fallon shared a mutual dislike growing up, has blossomed and traded one passion for another ... and Fallon is her willing target. But then a mission to protect Somers' salt trade goes awry, Fallon runs afoul of a brutal pirate, and the Sea Dog is enlisted by a Royal Navy captain to try and hoodwink the pirate at sea. And then a passing admiral asks Fallon's help seizing a Spanish treasure fleet, with a rich cargo bound for France.

There's a lot going on in The Bermuda Privateer, which is the first novel by advertising copywriter William Westbrook. It is, so far as I can tell, the first in a series of at least three Nicholas Fallon novels (to date).

There are some issues with the book that troubled me -- like, for instance, the casual way in which a British admiral places a privateer captain in charge of a navy frigate (circumventing the navy's rigid chain of command and promotion), or the easy acceptance by the admiral, officers and men of the tiny fleet of a female first lieutenant who, of course, is able to outsail, outfight and outthink most of her male counterparts. Fallon's timing and luck is just a little too good, and he makes friends just a little too easily -- such that they will bend the rules or betray their countries for him, based on just a few days' acquaintance. And the aforementioned first lieutenant, the peg-legged Beauty McFarland (who is, for no particular reason apparent in the plot, a lesbian), seems to be there primarily to check a few diversity boxes.

Those are quibbles that did not stop me from enjoying this book immensely. Westbrook's narrative style is easy and entertaining, his primary characters are well developed and interesting, and there are plenty of supporting characters to move the story along. The plot is packed with action and seasoned with unexpected twists. And, unlike some nautical fiction I've read, you don't need to know a lot about sailing to understand what's going on.

Some dire situations are resolved a little too quickly or neatly for my tastes, but Westbrook certainly isn't shy about getting gritty with his characters, and readers certainly will be surprised at times by the turns this novel takes. The Bermuda Privateer is a fine first effort, and I hope to enjoy more of Westbrook's work in the future.

[ visit William Westbrook online ]