The Time of Terror

The Time of Terror by Seth Hunter is the first volume of a planned trilogy set in the turbulence of the Terror inspired by Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety. Nathan Peake is the commander of a brig based at the port of Rye in East Sussex and is used mainly for chasing smugglers on behalf of the Customs but the Admiralty decide he is just the man for a special assignment. The British Government realising that war with Revolutionary France is inevitable are in touch with opponents of Robespierre's regime and plan to help them by smuggling forged French banknotes into Paris. Peake is to command a captured American ship and to pass himself off as a blockade runner. He successfully lands his cargoe and meets his contact, an American, Gilbert Imlay who is the lover of the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. Through them he meets many of the leading figures in Parisian society such as Georges Danton and Camilles Desmoulins. He also meets and falls in love with the beautiful Countess of Turenne. From riotous meetings of the French Assembly to secret trysts with the Paris underworld Seth Hunter takes his hero through every danger and at a cracking pace that kept this reader hanging on every word. Two more volumes to come. Not half enough if this is anything to go by.