The Reverse of the Medal

Jack Aubrey, home from the sea, is drawn into a London scheme that uses a false hint about peace to move government funds on the Stock Exchange. He is arrested for fraud, tried, struck from the Navy List, and set in the pillory, where seamen form a guard. Stephen Maturin works through intelligence friends and money to salvage Jack's name and to secure a ship. The action moves between Whitehall, the City, and the hulks. The novel is a naval story of disgrace on shore during the Napoleonic wars, not a courtroom puzzle and not a tale that stands wholly apart from the wider Aubrey-Maturin sequence.

Bound in dark blue buckram, cover blocked in gilt and colour with a design by Neil Gower. Blue slipcase.