Ramage's Mutiny

Have been reading all his books and I can say thhat have liked them all up to now.

In this particular book, we find Ramage sailing around the Caribbean. He's given the task of retrieving a ship that mutineers have given over to the Spanish. One captain has already failed. The task is impossible. Can Ramage do it? Of course. Ramage is a true hero in the old style tradition. You know he will succeed; the joy in these books is reading HOW he will succeed. Rarely is the answer obvious, so his plans are almost always a surprise. I still think this series would have made (or make) a better TV or movie series than Hornblower. There's a lot of action and adventure here.

Wherein Capt. Ramage expects prize moneys (from #7 DIAMOND), fits out a captured frigate, attends a court martial, hears of mutiny and a mad captain, reconnoiters the Spanish Main (I'd always wondered what that was) on an impossible task, cleverly incites a "mutiny," enters an enemy harbor and mans another ship, sets off some fireworks, is hit by a storm, and searches for a bit of treasure. Just another West Indies adventure taken in stride by Lord Ramage! An interesting facet of these middle books in the series (this is #8, and they're not so good if read out of order), is how Dudley Pope is using Ramage's officers as commentators on the qualities of superior leadership, exemplified by the inspiring Capt. Ramage of course. Here it is finely calibrated anticipation of enemy responses and "planned surprises" for them (a la the real Lord Cochrane's prescriptions, again). Pope skillfully lays out Ramage's plans but never spoils them with anticipatory details: you still have to guess 'em. The Admiral back in Antigua makes a fine foil for Ramage's audacity. The concluding chapters are something of an anticlimax. The action scenes race along, and the storm fearsomely roars--a sudden calderete cascading from the Venezuelan mountain valleys. Another wrap around cover art by Paul Wright (but the sail plan depicted doesn't make sense to me). One map of the eastern Caribbean ("Cannibal") Sea, that would have been good to have back in volume 3 already.