The Mountain of Gold

- With swashbuckling suspense, royal intrigue, and high seas naval action, Davies’s witty second novel (following Gentleman Captain) continues the antics of audacious young Capt. Matthew Quinton. While serving King Charles II’s royal navy in 1663, Quinton captures a Muslim pirate who turns out to be an Irish renegade, and the Irishman spins a preposterous tale about a mountain of gold in Africa in a rash effort to save his life. Blinded by greed, King Charles sends Quinton, his ship, and the Irishman on a forlorn expedition to Dutch-held West Africa to find the treasure. Quinton and his men figure their expedition will provoke the expected and desired war with the Dutch, and that if the Dutch don’t kill them, then heat, disease, starvation, or angry natives will. Troubled by the king’s odd interest in his brother’s upcoming marriage to a “murderous harpy,” Quinton wonders why his own brother-in-law warns him that his mission to Africa must not succeed. Set 150 years before C.S. Forester’s Hornblower series, this rousing yarn provides enough clever foreshadowing to ensure more books in this excellent series. - Publishers Weekly

- Great adventures often start with the rumor of a mythical destination. This adventure, the exciting sequel to Gentleman Captain, begins when a captured Barbary pirate speaks of just such a place, a mountain of gold. Rather than hang this enemy of England, King Charles II hands him back over to the man who apprehended him, Capt. Matthew Quinton. Quinton and the pirate devise an expedition to Africa and the treasure, which the king desires for his campaign against the Dutch. Before setting sail, Quinton tries passionately to dissuade his older brother from marrying (by an arrangement of the king) a mysterious French vixen who may have killed her previous husbands. Once out to sea, the captain’s mission takes on new complications that test his crew and England’s reputation as a maritime power. Davies, a noted historian on the 17th-century British navy (Pepys’s Navy), captures the romance of high-seas adventure in the grand tradition of Patrick O’Brian while also vividly depicting the era’s politics, battles, and tactics that shape his seasoned sea captain - Library Journal

Matthew Quinton, the appealing title hero of Davies' Gentleman Captain (2010), returns in this 17th-century seafaring saga on a royal assignment to find a long-rumored mountain of gold in North Africa. Can the scoundrel who swears he has seen these riches be trusted? Should his punishment for crimes against the British fleet be suspended so he can lead Quinton to the gold? Meanwhile, back in the northern British village of Ravensden, can King Charles II be trusted in promoting the marriage of Quinn's brother to a woman who is said to have murdered her two previous spouses? Told in breezy, larkish fashion, the book pits Quinn against one Brian Doyle O'Dwyer, whom he first encounters as a surviving Malta galley man calling himself Omar Ibrahim—an Irish rogue speaking Arabic with an Irish brogue. Charles, who will do anything to acquire the riches to put England on equal financial footing with the Dutch, quickly names O'Dwyer a lieutenant colonel in the Irish army. Quinn knows the search for gold has folly written all over it but is smart enough to know not to stand in the way of a king with visions of instant wealth. Numerous fact-based characters appear in the novel, including Samuel Pepys and naval and military leader Robert Holmes. Equally comfortable as a social observer, Davies thrives on the down time back in England before the big voyage, wittily describing political rivalries, adulteries and Quinn's fruitless efforts to have a baby with his Dutch wife. His encounters with pirates may be the least-interesting part of the story. A naval adventure that goes well beyond the usual outlines of the genre to paint a lively portrait of England in the 1600s. - Kirkus Reviews (although it's a shame the reviewer keeps calling the hero 'Quinn'...)