A lot happens in A Flag of Truce, fourth book in one of David Donachie's many nautical series set in the Age of Sail.

It's still 1793. Ralph Barclay, the captain who illegally pressed John Pearce and several others from a seaside tavern earlier that year, gets his day in court. But the long-awaited court martial doesn't go as Pearce had hoped.

For one thing, Pearce and his friends are sent off on a mission and are unable to testify on their own behalf. The depositions they gave prior to leaving are "lost" and not admitted into evidence. And Barclay persuades several people to lie for him, including his wife's nephew. She, for her part, isn't very happy to discover her husband's duplicity, even as their marriage continues to drift apart.

But all this, while monumental in the life of Pearce and his friends, is secondary to the main plot, which places Pearce, under the command of Lt. Henry Digby, master and commander of HMS Faron, at Toulon. There, the bloody siege that began in An Awkward Commission is underway, and Digby is ordered to escort ships carrying 5,000 French sailors -- too dangerous to allow free in Toulon, too costly to keep imprisoned -- to another French port where they can disembark and trouble the British no more.

Certainly, that mission won't go smoothly. And Pearce finds himself an unwilling pawn in a game between Admiral Samuel Hood, who is in charge of the Mediterranean fleet, and Vice Admiral William Hotham; while supposedly united in purpose, they are fierce political opposites, and their strategies rarely coincide. It doesn't help that Barclay counts Hotham as his primary sponsor in the navy.

Intrigue and conflict abound in this series, and Donachie has peopled it with a strong cast of supporting characters. I am a fan of much of this author's work, but the Pearce series is quickly becoming my favorite of the bunch.