Kelly McGuire came of age in his Majesty’s Navy during the Great War, and unlike many he stuck it out through the ‘peace” — though for him it wasn’t so peaceful, between running around in China and having his heart broken. Now Europe is preparing for another attempt at suicide, and McGuire and his destroyer are in the heart of it. Opening outside of Iberia, where McGuire and company are helping nuns escape from the Marxists and helping political dissidents escape from Franco, McGuire witnesses the invasion of Norway and does his bit to savage German ammunition transports. From his assumption of command at the Battle of Jutland when his captain perished, McGuire is now a commander of destroyer flotillas. As it becomes obvious that the British expeditionary force is about to be trapped in Dunkirk, McGuire — with a history of pulling off evacuations — he’s tapped to help. As usual, McGuire is one part Horatio Hornblower, one part Forrest Gump: he’s always where the action is and making history, despite occasionally losing lovers and ships. There are a few lulls between assignments, and here Charley makes a return. One element of the McGuire stories I’ve especially enjoyed is his complicated relationships, both with a fellow officer who he’s frenemies with and the woman he loves but can’t be with because he’s married to the Navy. His and Charley’s relationship and interactions are heavy with emotion — pain, resentment, and love all jockying for space in their hearts and heads as they stare and make their way in war that’s already cost both. As you’d expect from a novel set during World War 2, there is a lot of action in this, with more death than the prior two books together, and many scenes that deliver some sense of the horror and chaos of battle — decks slick with blood from the wounded, men gasping for air as their ship is burning beneath them. Given that this is the third book in the trilogy, Hennessy wraps things up nicely, both with the war and with Charley — but boy, does poor McGuire have to earn his happy ending.

Highlights:

‘Si vis pacem para bellum. Well, now we’re up to the necks in the bellum we haven’t para’d for.

‘I’m bloody hungry,’ a Guardsman next to him said. ‘I ain’t had anything to eat for three days.’ ‘We could always eat each other,’ Kelly suggested. ‘But, as senior officer,’ he said, ‘I expect first bite.’

There was a line of splashes alongside the leading Italian cruiser, then they all saw a yellow flash just abaft the bridge. ‘One for his nob!’ Latimer said. ‘With your knowledge of Shakespeare,’ Kelly observed, ‘you might have come up with something more memorable than that.’ ‘How about “A hit, a hit, a palpable hit”, sir?’

She immediately gave him a drink and said she was going to change into something comfortable. His look of alarm made her smile. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That was a silly thing to say. It doesn’t mean what it means in novels.’