SHARPE'S ESCAPE: Portugal, 1810
Bernard Cornwell
HarperCollins
Historical Fiction
ISBN: 0060530472

Those of you who are coming to SHARPE'S ESCAPE after reading the previous nineteen volumes may be excused for sighing every now and then. Richard Sharpe, that dauntless desperado of Lord Wellington's Peninsular Campaign, is back, fighting against the forces of Napoleon in Portugal. And, of course, Sergeant Patrick Harper is here, wielding his massive nine-barreled gun and yet another incompetent English
commander to contend with, and a perfidious ally. And, of course, Sharpe makes a powerful enemy early on, this time a heavily muscled Portuguese enforcer selling contraband to the French. By the time the innocent English governess shows up behind enemy lines, even the most devoted fan of Bernard Cornwell's masterful series may be rolling his eyes a bit. This is --- quite literally ---- territory that fans of the series have marched over before, more than once.

Cornwell has a gift and a curse. His gift is his intimate knowledge of Wellington's campaign against Napoleon and his ability to transmit that knowledge through the exploits of Richard Sharpe on the battlefield. (Sharpe's parallel achievements in the bedroom, of course, cannot be attributed to the Iron Duke, though Cornwell records those faithfully as well.) His curse is that he can't stop writing. Cornwell is almost maddeningly prolific --- but unlike other prolific writers, he is also incredibly consistent. SHARPE'S ESCAPE is the equal of the other nineteen; there's no appreciable difference in quality. Only the situations remain familiar. So if you're reading SHARPE'S ESCAPE and think you might have read it before, you may be very nearly right.

But if you haven't --- well, then, perhaps it's time that you had.

SHARPE'S ESCAPE is about a campaign as stern and unyielding as its hero. The British forces, in the early stage of the battle for the Iberian Peninsula, are marching towards the safety of the Lines of Torres Vedras, a great defensive bastion protecting the city of Lisbon from invasion. Wellington expects the French to besiege the lines of fortifications, and the best way to win such a siege is to deny as much rations to the enemy as possible. Lieutenant Richard Sharpe and his men are on a scorched-earth mission as the book starts, seeking to destroy as much food as possible while herding the local civilians behind friendly lines.

Sharpe's mission is complicated by a Portuguese major who is ostensibly gathering information from the enemy and, not incidentally, selling food to them --- food that coincidentally happens to be owned by his brother. Sharpe disrupts this flow of food and makes two powerful enemies. Additionally, Sharpe faces opposition in his South Essex Regiment, as his colonel seeks to promote a socially connected relative over his head. Add to that the implacable hostility from the French forces contesting for the control of Portugal, and Sharpe is arrayed against numerous --- and familiar --- enemies.

That Richard Sharpe gets the better of his enemies is not to be doubted. What makes the Sharpe novels so infectiously fun is how he does it; how he manages to outfight and outwit those who would stand in his way. Richard Sharpe is a thief and a rogue in search of gold, girls and glory, but he's uncommonly honest about it --- and immensely likeable as a result. Here, he's paired with a lawyerly Portuguese officer and a prim English schoolmarm, and it's not too long in their acquaintance before both come to Sharpe's way of thinking about plunder, bad language and survival.

SHARPE'S ESCAPE is about survival --- survival, in this instance, from a deadly trap and through two harrowing battles. The trap tests Sharpe's resourcefulness --- and his stomach --- while the battles test Cornwell's ability to make what's happening in combat clear and understandable. The author writes with the authority of one who has seen the ground, who has traipsed all over the sites of Wellington's campaigns, and who knows what it was like to serve in a nineteenth-century regiment and take on the legions of the Emperor for low wages, short rations and mortal danger. Cornwell is good enough at transmitting all of this that one wonders what he could accomplish as a straight historian --- though he's far too skilled as a novelist to lose.

There may be more than a ring of familiarity throughout SHARPE'S ESCAPE, but for those who have read the prior installments, it's a welcome sound indeed. And for those who haven't, it's an excellent chance to take up the Baker rifle and the green jacket, marching in the ranks and slogging through the mud of war with Lieutenant Richard Sharpe.

   --- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds (curtis@txreviews.com). Curtis recently completed his first novel, CHASING DIMAGGIO, excerpted at http://www.txreviews.com/chasingdimaggio/index.html

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