Before diving right into Alan Lewrie's latest naval adventure (if one may do so without besmirching one's own fine sense of honor by exposing it to such a rogue), it might be a good idea to discover just exactly who in the hell this Alan Lewrie character was.

Of course, for those of you with a taste for stirring action and some salacious wenching, you may plunge right on to Chapter One and elide this brief curriculum vitae. But for the more inquisitive reader unfamiliar with the previous accounts about our nautical hero, a reader not entirely taken in by splashy dust jackets and titillating blurb copy, believe me, this chronicler understands your plight. You have found this tome, and it sounded as though it might contain scads of blood and thunder, shivering tops'ls and timbers (as in shiver me timbers, mate), lots of derring-do, and some naughty bits tucked into the odd corner, but it's a wrench trying to pick up on the middle release of a whole series of nautical adventure in mid-tack, as our protagonist has learned to say at this stage of his career.

So allow me to condense this young Corinthian's past for you before getting into all the sex, swords and sailing ships (not necessarily in that order). I look upon it as a public duty. After all, did C. S. Forester do this for you? No, you had to wait for The Homblower Companion. Did Sherlock Holmes ever have a biography, or did you have to search for clues in the works themselves?