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Edward Peters

The Time  of Terror
by Seth Hunter
Headline, HK$350
First there was C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower;  more recently, Patrick O'Brian conceived the more spiky Aubrey-Maturin  duo. Now Seth Hunter (not his real name) is hacking away at the rich seam of British historical naval fiction, featuring the preternaturally heroic Commander Nathan Peake in  The Time of Terror, the first of a promised trilogy.
The novel, set in the late 18th century in the aftermath of the French Revolution, follows a  well-established formula. Peake - painter, flautist, poet and amateur astronomer - is engaged in humdrum anti-smuggling duties; then he is sent on an undercover mission. His Franco-American mother is a radical society beauty, his father a retired admiral who farms sheep.
Cue the guillotine, a battle scene or two, a randy widow as love interest, counterfeit currency, a dash of skulduggery, ghostly catacombs and the stormy English Channel.
Terror is billed as a combination of John Le Carre and O'Brian. The pseudonymous Hunter is billed as  a prize-winning children's author. And here lies the rub. Despite a reasonable plot and obviously having done his research,  Hunter fails to bring Peake  or indeed any of the characters alive.
Terror frequently reads more  like an entertainment for children, the action seems stilted and the dialogue veers between phonetically rendered rural English and modern phraseology.    The single, thankfully brief, sex scene is a promising candidate for the annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction award.   Viz: 'He shuddered and groaned, but in his murmured English ecstasy she heard a word she did not like, left what she was doing and slapped his face. Never, ever call me that, she said. Then she sat on it.'
To dwell on the positives for a moment,  Terror casts some interesting light on one of the most turbulent periods of European history. The revolutionary spirit that rampaged in Paris at the time sent tremors across the continent; the British government did its utmost to destabilise the French regime and the secret agents it despatched went in fear of their lives.
The catacombs beneath the French capital, known as the Empire of the Dead, were used by outlaws for centuries (and are now open to the public).
Terror ends with Peake shooting and wounding his sometime torturer, Citoyen Gillet - but the Frenchman escapes, thereby setting the scene for the second part of the trilogy and the inevitable dramatic surprise return of the naval commander's nemesis. Peake sails back to England with his former lover's 10-year-old son, who opines that his new guardian looks like a girl. ''Thank you,' said Nathan. 'There is nothing wrong with  being a girl.''
Is this a hint that Peake is going to come out of the navy and the closet, fall for  Gillet and settle down to a life of sheep farming, painting and setting verses about the stars to his flute, with some occasional flagellation thrown in? Only Mr Whoever-he-is Hunter can provide the answers.



The Time of Terror