This is the fifth in Parkinson's Richard Delancey series, taking up the story directly where Touch and go stops. We follow Delancey through an on-shore interlude during the Peace of Amiens, followed by service with the Channel Fleet once hostilities resume. The author finally allows him to fall in love, but we also have a bit of yachting on Windermere and an encounter with the pioneer steam tug Charlotte Dundas on the Forth-Clyde canal.

For my money, this is a rather weaker book than Touch and go -- the story is a series of largely unrelated incidents, there's rather too much reliance on improbable espionage and secret weapons, not enough straightforward naval material. The love interest is very perfunctorily handled, and Delancey's Fiona never seems to emerge as a character in her own right in the way that Aubrey's Sophie and Hornblower's Lady Barbara do.

What Parkinson doesn't seem to have understood is that Forester could get away with the "behind French lines" stuff because his readers all knew he meant "Hitler" when he said "Napoleon"; O'Brien gets away with it because he is good at it, and has taken the trouble to establish in Maturin a character whose background goes well with intelligence work. Parkinson just seems to chuck it in for no obvious reason, other than that he can't think what to do with Delancey as a frigate captain. ( )