Dear Mr. Cornwell: I love your work and will joyfully continue to read whatever continues to spark your interest. That having been said, I do have preferences, and to the extent that your interest may be sparked by the interests and desires of your fans I offer the following. I really enjoyed the offbeat characters and the dark, twisted tone and subject matter of “Gallows Thief”, and I’m quite disappointed that there are no planned sequels. You seem to spend quite a lot of your time in “barbaric” Britain by choice, but the exploration of barbarity as an undercurrent beneath gilded and civilized British culture was quite dramatic and powerful. It was almost Dickensian, except without the cheese. I’d like more of that. Also, I know you’ve been taken to task by quite a few readers for having abandoned the Starbuck stories in favor of more Richard Sharpe. I like Sharpe, but I think it’s fair to say that he’s been pretty effectively covered. I mean no disrespect in saying this, but several months ago another of my favorite authors, Robert Jordan, passed away and left his life’s work uncompleted, I think because he had gotten too caught up inside of the world he had created and lost sight of the reasonable goal of telling his tale. So we now have essentially a 10,000 page unfinished novel which will eventually be cobbled together in some fashion by hired talent working on behalf of the author’s estate. I’m in my middle fifties now – as, I believe, was Mr. Jordan – and my sincere hope is that you and I both will enjoy another forty years of writing and reading pleasure (respectively). But I think it’s time to allow Richard Sharpe to enjoy a well earned “gentleman’s retirement”, and finish the telling of Nathaniel Starbuck’s tale. Affectionate regards, Larry