The Baltic Gambit

I look forward to each new book as this series appears and, as ever, The Baltic Gambit does not disappoint. Much of the action takes place ashore -- it is almost 200 pages before Lewrie gets a ship, and 300+ pages before a gun is fired in anger -- but I enjoyed reading about Lewrie's time in London. Lambdin provides this pleasure on several levels. On the one hand, Alan Lewrie continues to grow and mature. (Of course, he is pushing 40.) As the story moves through Lewrie's courtroom showdown with the odious Beauman family, he actually begins to tire of nightly bacchanals and starts to rise early and read seriously about world affairs (providing the author with an excellent way to provide geo-political context to the modern reader.) While not entirely immune to feminine charms and entanglements, he eschews the damn-the-consequences rutting of his younger days. He even makes efforts to curb the most flagrant of his excesses in deference the the straight-laced, proto-Victorian abolitionists who sponsored his defense. On the other hand, Lambdin's confident mastery of place and time has the reader wide-eyed and avid every time Lewrie sets out from his lodgings. High and low, rich and poor, honest folk and scoundrels, King's English and rogues' cant -- we meet a colorful and varied set of characters at every turn.

On the final hand, we are treated to Lambdin's sly narratorial voice. The book is narrated from the conventionally strict third-person omniscient point of view. Except. Except, Chapter Six opens with these words: "The Admiral Boscawen Coffee House, at the corner of Oxford Street and Orchard Street (site of the present day Selfridge's)..." Wow! This sole explicit intrusion of the 21st Century into the book colors the whole story. It tells us that we must drop all pretense that perspective is limited to 1801. Suspend disbelief at your own risk, reader -- you have been warned that you'll need to be looking through two lenses at the same time: Alan Lewrie's from 1801 and Dewey Lambdin's puckish view from 2009. At one point, Lewrie muses about an abolitionist who cares nothing for the suffering of slaves because his sole object is to tear the United States apart. (After all, the North and South are sure to be at each other's throats if slavery is abolished.) I can almost hear that 21st Century narrator chortling over his own cleverness.

Once Lewrie gets his ship, the frigate Thermopylae, we settle with a happy sigh into enjoying Lambdin's peerless passages of ship handling and fighting. Lewrie's cruise in the Baltic is, like the best of his adventures, ambiguous. The naval mission is combined with a "diplomatic" task, arranged by his shadowy mentor, Zachariah Twigg. The story culminates with a fine fictional account of the Battle of Copenhagen, including Nelson famously turning the blind eye and

Spoiler:

a cameo appearance by William "Breadfruit" Bligh.

As always, we are left wondering about several unresolved threads which Lambdin promises to take up in the next book, King, Ship, and Sword.

Excellent review pipester, my appetite is seriously whetted for this installment!

Small nitpick: I don't object to spoilers personally but some readers might appreciate the choice over whether to read some of the details you provided. Choosing which details to obscure through the use of the "spoiler" tag (click on the "Others" button while composing/editing your post) is an art form in itself (one man's "spoiler" is another's "but that should have been obvious!"), but some readers would prefer that the reviewer err on the side of caution.

Personally, I might have chosen to obscure the

Spoiler:

courtroom victory

, as well as

Spoiler:

Bligh's cameo appearance

.

To my mind, the second paragraph, while it actually quotes from the book, does not qualify as a spoiler.

Sigh, in my attempt to clarify my intentions, I've spent more time criticizing your review than praising it. So allow me to reiterate what a fine read it was.

Thank you, reb. You are quite right. I think about spoilers all the time as I write reviews. I try to write in such a way as to avoid having to use the spoiler tag altogether -- I find it very awkward (both while reading and writing) and think of it as a solution of last resort. The problem, of course is deciding how to write about a book without giving anything away. I try to stick to the "obvious," but (clearly) I sometimes am not able to step back enough to see the book through the eyes of someone who has not read it. Your two examples are cases in point, and I should have handled them differently. By way of locking the barn door after the horse has bolted, I have edited the review. Do you think the change I made to the first "spoiler" solves the problem? (I am asking this seriously and humbly in the hopes of learning enough to keep from spoiling again.)

Another lesson I have learned here is that spoilers may be more of an issue when writing about the newly-released latest book in a series! I thought for a long time before allowing myself to mention that Lewrie got a ship. You didn't cite this as a spoiler, so do you think that qualifies as obvious?

Thank you for the kind words and the food for thought!

I think that works well (the edit).

I'd be amazed if the blurb in the jacket did not mention the fact that he got a new ship so I dismissed that from consideration as a spoiler.

The blurb does indeed mention it and by implication the court outcome

After being freed at the Old Bailey Lewrie is given command of the frigate Thermopylae

Ah, well then, I think I can retract most of my arguments ...

I think your points were well made, reb. For one thing, people reading a review online may well not have the dust jacket in front of them. Is DJ copy generally accepted as defining the spoiler/not spoiler limits?

In any case, I'm grateful for the reminder. I would hate to diminish someone's reading pleasure by giving away surprises.

I finished this installment last week and agree with everything you said in your review, pipester, so I won't bother repeating them. I can't wait for the next installment.

The Paperback version of this novel is now available for pre-order. See here for more info