Read: "Rogue Officer" by Garry Douglas Kilworth

Read: Rogue Officer by Garry Douglas Kilworth, 2007, 9780727865359.

The second book I have read from Kilworth's "Fancy Jack" Crossman series. This was good. There were one or two other novels in between this one and the first one I read, Winter Soldiers. According to the back cover Kilworth has written about 50 novels.

Fancy Jack is sent to India and fights the rebels and general turmoil from the Sepoy Mutiny. I've read a few novels that cover colonial India (Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe and Allin Mallinson's Hervey series and Nightrunners of Bengal by John Masters) and it's a neat time period to read about. The interactions among the Indian princes and kings, the East India Company, the British and the everyday Indian are neat to read about.

Crossman is still working as a reconnaissance infantryman and spy. A cavalry officer named Deighnton has a bizarre grudge against Crossman and is intent on killing Crossman in a duel. Crossman works with his small unit of four men to first locate larger enemy units for the army and then hunt down smaller bands in the forests.

Kilworth gives more of a survey of Crossman's adventures. Kilworth will cover one adventure in detail - Crossman's capture by mutineers - and then give a quick four paragraph overview of a month of campaigning before dropping back into the story. The characters are interesting and the use of setting is very good.