Drums of War by Edward Marston

Daniel Rawson is a half-English, half-Dutch Captain under the Duke of Marlborough. He'sa good soldier, but where his value for the Duke really comes in is as a spy. Daniel has an absolute genius at blending in and getting information, or people, out of enemy hands and into the hands of the English.

His best friend in the army is a enlisted Sergeant named Henry Welbeck, a grumpy man with a pessimistic outlook on life. But now one of his relatives, a nephew named Tom Hillier, has joined the army as a drummer boy after hearing one of Welbeck's letters home. Wellbeck refuses to have anything to do with his nephew, fearing that his army career will end badly, but Tom persists nonetheless and earns Daniel's admiration.

But having Daniel's admiration puts Tom firmly in the sights of an officer who is jealous of Daniel's closeness with Marlborough, Major Simon Cracknell. And when Daniel is sent far from the front lines, on a mission to rescue a Dutch Master craftsman who was acting as a spy for Marlborough and the English, he must leave everyone behind- for both good and ill.

Daniel's mission takes him to Paris after the Master Tapestry maker Emanuel Janssen. He was invited to Paris by King Louis and worked on a tapestry for him. But now he has disappeared, leaving his daughter Amalia, her servant Beatrix and his apprentice, Dopff, to wonder what has happened to him. And now there is a man watching the house and looking at Amalia with such menace that she is utterly terrified.

When Daniel arrives, he scopes out the situation and goes to look for the man who was passing Janssen's reports along, only to find that he and his wife have been killed, hung by the neck in their own bedroom. He goes back to Amalia and convinces her to take a walk with her household, and takes care of the spy. But the man nearly gets away, and forces Dan to kill him.

He hurries Amalia and her household from the house where they have been living in, and lodges them across the city with a friend of his who married a Frenchwoman and now lives in Paris. He knows that the killing of the man watching the house will have consequences, but he also discovered where her father is being held- the Bastille. And getting him out of there, and all of them out of the city... Well, that will require some work.

Back at Camp, Tom is riding high, having made friends with one of the drummers who had been tormenting him. But now Cracknell decides to break him because Tom is well-regarded by Daniel. But when Tom holds up strong under Cracknell's treatment, a night at a local whorehouse gives Cracknell the excuse to destroy Tom under the guise of camp discipline. But will Tom live through this as well, or will the experience take away all his pleasure in army life?

And can Dan do anything to change the horrible road that Tom is being forced to travel down, or will it be too late by the time he gets back? The battle of Ramillies is coming, and all will be decided on its fields. Life, Death and the fate of Empires.

This is the second book in the series, but even though I didn't read the first, I found it a solid mystery, and a thrilling book. But since I didn't read the first book, it's hard for me to say how good of friends the two main characters are. They spend 80% of the novel apart, and rarely think of each other, but that's explained in how busy both are, and how both tends to keep their mind on their work, which is admirable in both characters- except when it leaves Tom Hillier open to abuse.

The characters are well drawn, and it is quite obvious early on that Simon Cracknell is a villain. You despise him the first time he appears, and he only seems to get worse every time he shows up. His subplot with his mistreatment of Tom easily overshadows most events in the second half of the book- including even the Battle of Ramillies- but only slightly for the last one. The ending of that particular story thread came as a bit of a shock- Tom had withdrawn from everyone, and there was no idea what was on his mind- until it happened. But it ensured that the ending was bitterly satisfying, if sad.

This bumping of the storylines makes the book a bit uneven. I was more interested in what was happening to Tom rather than another subplot about the Dutch wanting to murder Lord Marlborough, or even Daniel's rescuing of Janssen, but it also made me unable to put the book down until I was through with it. I'd recommend it, and somewhat strongly, but mention that the subplots weren't exactly well-balanced. YMMV, of course.