I really like Tom Sharpe. But after reading the South African novels and then jumping ahead to Blott on the Landscape (a classic), I was disappointed in this one. I have a difficult time with novels wherein the protagonist an unlikeable jerk. I had no empathy for him whatsoever. The book had a contrived setup for the main plot device (the hostage situation), which took up half the book. The foreign student was poorly developed and her mid-narrative personality shift was quite hard to swallow. The only saving grace in the book was Wilt's wife, who has a force of character that stole the show. She should have been the protagonist.
For more than twenty years, Richard Sharpe, the brave and dashing officer who rose from rags-on-the-street to a commission in his majesty's army, has been thrilling audiences on page and screen. Sharpe's Ransom, the year is post-war 1815, and Richard Sharpe has retired to France with a new wife and son! As it turns out, peace offers no safety from war. An old enemy appears on Christmas Eve to take Sharpe's family hostage. To save them, Sharpe must appeal to the local villagers, reluctant to trust an Englishman who fought against them not so long ago.
It is the summer of 1812 and Richard Sharpe, newly recovered from the wound he received in the fighting at Salamanca, is given an easy duty; to guard a Commissary Officer posted to an obscure Spanish fort where there are some captured French muskets to repair. But unknown to the British, the French are planning a raid and Sharpe is in for a fight!
In his quest to discover the truth about the disappearance of the Donna Louisa Vivar's husband, Richard Sharpe is taken to Chile, where he soon finds himself caught up in the rebellion against Spanish rule and fighting alongside the flamboyant rebel admiral, Lord Thomas Cochrane.
Bernard Corwell, author of Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Seige, and Sharpe's Revenge, continues the saga of Lt. Col. Richard Sharpe in this, his final adventure. Just as he comes face-to-face with his estranged wife and her lover at a grand society ball, news comes that the British-Prussian link is under attack. In the Battle of Waterloo, Sharpe once again plays a pivotal role in the outcome of a great British triumph.
