I discovered Richard and company at a very rough time in my life. I related to his difficulties in relating to his leadership the fact that he didn’t feel comfortable in the world he’d been thrust into. When my mom passed, I had Richard and Patrick. When I got sober, I had Richard and Patrick. During quarantine, I reread Trafalgar (still my favorite and thank you for not killing the midshipman). In the craziness of this current incarnation of reality, I like that I have these friends and their world where I can retreat to the calm and serenity of cannons firing and people slipping on the entrails of their friends as they struggle agonizingly forward towards almost certain death. Thank you for that.
I also read The Fort and enjoyed watching someone finally take Paul Revere down a peg. He was a self-aggrandizing pin-head.
The point of all this is, I wanted to say thank you and especially thank you for not killing my friends in the most recent Sharpe book. Hopefully, it will not be the last, but I understand that if it is, you left them in a comfortable place where I can think of them finally safe and happy. After the loss of Hagman and Harper’s insistence of following Sharpe into danger even though he was under no moral obligation to do so, I was worried you were going to kill Pat. It would have been a sadistic thing to do, but occasionally it feels you lean that way.
I am genuinely grateful for the worlds you create and the people I get to spend time with in those worlds. They let me examine the hard places in my own life and put some perspective on them. Thank you for that.
Well, I have to go get started on Redcoat now. I’m hoping one day, you’ll write something where the Americans get to be the good guys. Thank you again.
Keith Troop