Treason's Harbour is the ninth historical novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series by British author Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1983. The story is set during the Napoleonic Wars.

While with Captain Jack Aubrey awaiting repairs on his ship in Malta, Stephen Maturin discovers that the island is home to a ruthless network of French spies. An unwilling French informer needs help from Maturin, who discovers her predicament and helps her. Meanwhile, a new Admiral arrives at Malta. He sends Aubrey on three missions across the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, one on borrowed ships, and two of the missions are traps. Aubrey escapes the predicaments, but Admiral Harte dies when his ship of the line is destroyed in an ambush. The high level double agent whose existence Maturin begins to suspect does not succeed in undoing either Maturin or Aubrey, yet.

After the reissue of the novel in 1992, it received strong praise. In mentioning the dramatic fate of Mr Hairabedian, one reviewer wryly states that nothing happens in the novel, but the novels are "filled with real people doing real things, brilliantly imagined and conveyed in crisp, clear, strong writing.") 2 Henry VI, a speech by Suffolk.

Reviews

Publishers Weekly, reviewing an inadequate audio book narrator, commends the series in the highest terms, and is sharply critical of the narrator's inability to properly convey the main characters. They said of the series and the novel "what is certainly the greatest series about the British Navy ever written--indeed, one of the most successful of its magnitude ever written in any genre". Of the reader of this audio book, they said "Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actor Pigott-Smith has an appropriately English accent, but his characters' voices lack consistency and sensitivity to the subtleties of O'Brian's pen.", a rather sharp criticism.

Narrative style

Most of the novels in the series tell the story exclusively from the point of view of Maturin or Aubrey, either through descriptions through their eyes, direct conversations, their internal thoughts, or their letters and diary entries. In essence, the reader usually knows only what one or both of the two main characters know.

In Treason’s Harbour, however, O'Brian tells some of the story through conversations between the French agent Lesueur and Andrew Wray or other confederates in Malta, conversations that the protagonists neither hear nor overhear. Thus from the opening pages of the novel, the reader is aware that Wray, the acting second secretary of the British Admiralty, is secretly accepting money and taking orders from France. When Aubrey's mission to the Red Sea is a total failure, and again when Aubrey, Maturin, and Admiral Harte are sent on a suicide mission to the Barbary Coast, Aubrey begins to quietly doubt his luck, but the reader knows that he has been a victim of Wray's plots.

As the plot unfolds, Maturin gradually realises that there must be a traitor in the upper echelons of the British Admiralty. But again unlike the reader, he does not know the traitor's identity as the novel comes to a close. In fact, one of his last actions in the book is to write a letter to Wray detailing his suspicions and describing the French spy network in Malta.

Publication history

  • 1983 UK Collins hardback first edition
  • 1984, April UK Fontana paperback
  • 1992 USA W W Norton & Company paperback
  • 1997, March UK, HarperCollins paperback
  • 2003, July USA Chivers Windsor Paragon & Co large print paperback
  • 2007 UK HarperCollins paperback
  • 2011, December USA W W Norton & Company e-book

The books in this series by Patrick O'Brian were re-issued in the US by W. W. Norton & Co. in 1992, after a re-discovery of the author and this series by Norton, finding a new audience for the entire series. Norton issued Treason's Harbour nine years after its initial publication, as a paperback in 1992. Ironically, it was a US publisher, J. B. Lippincott & Co., who asked O'Brian to write the first book in the series, Master and Commander published in 1969. Collins picked it up in the UK, and continued to publish each novel as O'Brian completed another story. Beginning with The Nutmeg of Consolation in 1991, the novels were released at about the same time in the USA (by W W Norton) and the UK (by HarperCollins, the name of Collins after a merger).

Novels prior to 1992 were published rapidly in the US for that new market. Following novels were released at the same time by the UK and US publishers. Collins asked Geoff Hunt in 1988 to illustrate the covers of the twelve books already published by then, with The Letter of Marque being the first book to have Hunt's work on the first edition. He continued to paint the covers for future books; the covers were used on both USA and UK editions. Reissues of earlier novels used the Geoff Hunt covers.

References

External sources

  • Maps for Treason's Harbour
  • Geoff Hunt Covers for all books in the series