The Face of the Enemy
Revised on April, 2016.
This is the first book in a series of ten. A saga of the Morgan family of Penzance Cornwall (the tenth, The Sailor Prince is on the stocks, and heading towards the slip). The year is 1793, after a string of victories in Europe; France declares war on Britain, believing her time had come to exact revenge and conquer and invade her old enemy. With a navy depleted of ships and those still afloat aged and in poor condition, her officer class 'on the beach' and her streets full of distressed and crippled seamen, Britain stirred herself, and recalling those in need of ships set about rebuilding her navy and what she couldn't build she stole from the enemy.
Her best attribute had always been the fighting spirit of her seamen and once again she called upon them to defend their homeland. The Morgan family were men of the sea, two of them, James and Matthew became captains. James commanded the Osprey a forty-gun frigate; Matthew commanded the Concorde an ex-smuggling ship, a chasse-maree, both ships captured from the French.
The Osprey, after capturing and sinking so many French ships had became a thorn in the side of the revolutionary French navy and is harried and pursued in a determined attempt to put an end to her successful campaign. In this book a Capitain Furneaux is beheaded; leading to the three other Furneaux brothers, all commanding French warships being particularly eager to exact revenge.
The Concorde a triple-masted, six-sail lugger a peculiar French design found only in France was owned and administered by the 'Department' a secret Government organisation concerned with seeking out foreign agents, espionage and sabotage. After a short but exemplary career Matthew was chosen to command her crew of eighty. The men and officers were, like their captain, predominantly fit, skilful young men. They sought out and destroyed traitors, assassinated spies, sabotaged ships and anything and everything the Department dictated. A reader will discover that there is more action in any one of these books than might be found than in any three other books of the same genre
I hope these innovative books will bring as much pleasure to the readers as they did to the writer.
Author's notes;
1.As in all series, be they TV programs, books or films, certain information has to be carried forward to provide continuity of the stories. Sometimes this is done in one block; like a preview before a TV program, or flash backs during the program. An American writer overcomes the problem by committing the first chapter of every book to a preview of all previous books. They all work but I thought it better to drip-feed this information into the text as the story progressed, it being less intrusive. But it does leave the author open to the charge of repetition. So be it, but the story itself is the most important ingredient and leaving gaps in the readers knowledge leaving the reader guessing would be the inexcusable.
2.In this book, The Face of the Enemy, I killed off the father of one of the main characters to give the story a revenge impetus. I then needed to give this boy character a protector, a father figure. This I did in the shape of a seven foot Irishman I named Finn Maguire... and wondered if I had gone a bit too far in making him seven foot. Later on in the writing the series I learned that in a Dublin medical teaching hospital, displayed in a glass case is the skeleton of a seven-foot two inch Irishman. Imagine my astonishment when I discovered his name too was... Maguire!
Glyn Adams
Book 1 of 10
Cover illustration by David K. Devauden
Genre: Thriller
Revised on April, 2016.
This is the first book in a series of ten. A saga of the Morgan family of Penzance Cornwall (the tenth, The Sailor Prince is on the stocks, and heading towards the slip). The year is 1793, after a string of victories in Europe; France declares war on Britain, believing her time had come to exact revenge and conquer and invade her old enemy. With a navy depleted of ships and those still afloat aged and in poor condition, her officer class 'on the beach' and her streets full of distressed and crippled seamen, Britain stirred herself, and recalling those in need of ships set about rebuilding her navy and what she couldn't build she stole from the enemy.
Her best attribute had always been the fighting spirit of her seamen and once again she called upon them to defend their homeland. The Morgan family were men of the sea, two of them, James and Matthew became captains. James commanded the Osprey a forty-gun frigate; Matthew commanded the Concorde an ex-smuggling ship, a chasse-maree, both ships captured from the French.
The Osprey, after capturing and sinking so many French ships had became a thorn in the side of the revolutionary French navy and is harried and pursued in a determined attempt to put an end to her successful campaign. In this book a Capitain Furneaux is beheaded; leading to the three other Furneaux brothers, all commanding French warships being particularly eager to exact revenge.
The Concorde a triple-masted, six-sail lugger a peculiar French design found only in France was owned and administered by the 'Department' a secret Government organisation concerned with seeking out foreign agents, espionage and sabotage. After a short but exemplary career Matthew was chosen to command her crew of eighty. The men and officers were, like their captain, predominantly fit, skilful young men. They sought out and destroyed traitors, assassinated spies, sabotaged ships and anything and everything the Department dictated. A reader will discover that there is more action in any one of these books than might be found than in any three other books of the same genre
I hope these innovative books will bring as much pleasure to the readers as they did to the writer.
Author's notes;
1.As in all series, be they TV programs, books or films, certain information has to be carried forward to provide continuity of the stories. Sometimes this is done in one block; like a preview before a TV program, or flash backs during the program. An American writer overcomes the problem by committing the first chapter of every book to a preview of all previous books. They all work but I thought it better to drip-feed this information into the text as the story progressed, it being less intrusive. But it does leave the author open to the charge of repetition. So be it, but the story itself is the most important ingredient and leaving gaps in the readers knowledge leaving the reader guessing would be the inexcusable.
2.In this book, The Face of the Enemy, I killed off the father of one of the main characters to give the story a revenge impetus. I then needed to give this boy character a protector, a father figure. This I did in the shape of a seven foot Irishman I named Finn Maguire... and wondered if I had gone a bit too far in making him seven foot. Later on in the writing the series I learned that in a Dublin medical teaching hospital, displayed in a glass case is the skeleton of a seven-foot two inch Irishman. Imagine my astonishment when I discovered his name too was... Maguire!
Glyn Adams
Book 1 of 10
Cover illustration by David K. Devauden
Genre: Thriller
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