Marty is now a Captain and is waiting for his next ship, while his flotilla is undergoing refit after the depredations of the Caribbean he is asked to recover jewels and top secret documents stollen by a spurned lover of Prince George, leading to a race across Spain. Admiral Hood redeploys they S.O.F. to Gibraltar and William Wickham assigns them a new intelligence officer but what they don't expect is to get involved in a major counter espionage operation in Malta. Marty meets and befriends Rear Admiral Sir Sidney Smith at the battle of Maida and his nemesis from the Caribbean, de Faux, turns up and vendetta is declared. A fast moving adventure full of action, suspense and surprises. The incident with the Prince Regent is pure fiction but could well have happened as he was a womaniser and had a sequence of mistresses. It was inspired by something a friend once said, "a wife is expensive, but a mistress is ten times the cost."  I guess he should remain nameless! The years covered by the book were relatively quiet, historically.  The Peninsular War was just beginning to fulminate at this time and the British could see the storm clouds on the horizon so moving the whole operation down to Gibraltar made sense.   I was researching that when I came upon the war in Calabria and specifically the Battle of Maida and lo and behold there was Sir Sidney Smith!  I have been looking for an excuse to get him together with Marty for ages and that dropped right into my lap! But the meat of the story is in the counter espionage exercise in Malta and the arrival of de Faux, aka le Bonne, in the Mediterranean.  Marty picked up on the horse's head idea in Sicily and I have no idea if it was common practice at that time but it did the job of enraging de faux and setting him off in the right direction, so I put it in regardless. Fun to write and from the reviews so far fun to read. Dog loving history buff with an overactive imagination, I live in The Netherlands with my wife, two dogs and cat.  I have been an avid reader of fighting sail and fantasy and love a good spy story so when I mix all that up with a bit of me and some family history we end up with The Dorset Boy.  I write for me and am constantly amazed that other people want to read my books.  I am trying hard to improve the quality and accuracy as I move forward and have learnt a lot in the last few years.