Just as I thought my interest in the Sharpe series was waning, I read this magnificent story. How can an adventurous military action be made from a period in time where Sharpe is sent back to England to find and return to Spain with his regiments reinforcements?
The story is the reinforcements don’t exist according to the War office and a corrupt politician. Sharpe doesn’t know the politician is corrupt and doesn’t care, all he wants are the reinforcements without which his regiments will be dissolved into other fighting units. Finding them leads him from Spain to the places of his childhood in London and into the stinking marshes of foulness in the 1800’s. It also links into the first chronological Sharpe adventure in how he is reunited with his Eagle Superbly written, one of my favourite Sharpe books so far.