Patrick O'Brian
Book 20 of the Aubrey/Maturin series
Blue at the Mizzen
"The old master has us again in the palm of his hand."—Los Angeles Times (a Best Book of 1999)
Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo, and the ensuing peace brings with it both the desertion of nearly half of Captain Aubrey's crew and the sudden dimming of Aubrey's career prospects in a peacetime navy. When the Surprise is nearly sunk on her way to South America—where Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are to help Chile assert her independence from Spain—the delay occasioned by repairs reaps a harvest of strange consequences.
The South American expedition is a desperate affair; and in the end Jack's bold initiative to strike at the vastly superior Spanish fleet precipitates a spectacular naval action that will determine both Chile's fate and his own.
"Filled with exuberance and humor, and a writer's palpable delight at exercising his finest muscles. . . . At sea with a master."—San Francisco Chronicle
"O'Brian has presented his readers with a shining jewel...an intricate, multifaceted work."—New York Times Book Review
In addition to twenty volumes in the highly respected Aubrey/Maturin series, Patrick O'Brian's many books include Testimonies, The Golden Ocean, and The Unknown Shore. O'Brian also wrote acclaimed biographies of Pablo Picasso and Sir Joseph Banks and translated many works from the French, among them the novels and memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Lacouture's biographies of Charles de Gaulle. He passed away in January 2000 at the age of 85.
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