The Pirate Devlin

Book excerpt: A wry, swashbuckling tale of greed and deceit that traverses the excitement—and fury—​of the 18th-century's golden age of piracy. An injured French officer struggles along a desolate stretch of West African coastline, desperate to hold on to a secret. His tale soon ends—violently—but a young pirate recruit, Patrick Devlin, leaves that same beach unscathed, with a new pair of boots and a treasure map in his possession. Now, the adventures of the pirate Devlin, his shipmates, and those who wish them all dead move forward without restraint, through broadside barrages and subterfuge and brutal encounters on land and at sea, where nothing is as it seems. In these pages, readers will meet Blackbeard and his cohorts, Portuguese colonial governors and French commandants, officials of the East India Company and Royal Naval officers, fresh-faced midshipmen and gnarly, scarred, and drunken pirate crewmen. But none is as impressive and memorable as the former servant and newly minted pirate Captain Devlin—unless it's the one man he once served on board a British man-of-war, a man now sworn to kill him.