This is the fourth in the Captain Daniel Rawson series and for me probably the most disappointing.

After three victories over the French army in Belgium during the Spanish War of Succession the allied forces of British and Dutch armies set out to besiege Lille, a supposedly unconquerable city. Daniel Rawson is given the task of sneaking into the city,out-witting its inhabitants and stealing the blueprints for its defences aided by a Welsh camp follower called Rachel Rees whom he had saved from molestation earliar. He must also face men from his own side who wish to kill him also

A siege by nature is a pretty static affair and for me much of the action was in a similar vein. It was largely rehashed from preceding books and too many of the characters were black and white, either good or evil. In particular Daniel was just too good to ring true. Twice he was offered sex on a plate and on both occasions he declined because he was in love with someone else, personally I would have taken to him more if he been bit more of a bounder and had bedded every woman he could get his hands on. Then at the end he is given special leave to leave the battlefield to head back to England to pursue his love. I mean "please"! What interested me most about this book was the 'courtship' between Rachel Rees and Daniel's friend Sergeant Henry Welbeck but this in the end was left frustratingly unresolved which was a real shame as it added colour to an otherwise fairly drab tale.

The main redeeming factor with the previous books in this series was the details around the Spanish War of Succession, a period in history that I will freely admit that I know little about. However, this too was largely missing from this book and hence the reason why it was IMHO inferior to those that went before. Marston may be a good writer of detective novels (friends speak highly of his Railway Detective series) but personally I don't feel that war is really his forte. Sorry. ( )