The Most Bold and Daring Act of the Age: A Henry Doyle Novel

At 55, Henry Doyle has it all: wealth, happiness, a loving wife, a young son, and most important, his life - after a violently successful, 35-year career as a spy, a soldier of fortune, and as needed, a paid assassin. To the men he'd led in battle against Napoleon, he was El Habibka, the legendary Bedouin cavalry general. To the French who hated and feared him, he was more ominous: a shadow - a Sufi ghost - le wraith qui dispara t. When Napoleon escapes captivity on Elba in 1815 to return as Emperor, Henry comes out of retirement, risking all to stop him - and fails, winding up in an Algerian dungeon tortured by his enemy Vizier Hashin. His half-brother Peter Kirkpatrick, a dashing American privateer captain, sails for Algiers in a daring, but utterly foolhardy rescue attempt. Henry's wife Dihya, knowing nothing of Peter's plan, determines to free her husband the only way she can think of: by becoming an odalisque in his captor's harem. Her weapons are sex, her courage, and her razor-sharp shreu dagger. The Most Bold and Daring Act of the Age weaves together three journeys: Peter Kirkpatrick's attempt to fight his way into Algiers to rescue Henry; Dihya's infiltration of Hashin's harem to accomplish the same goal; and Henry's spiritual torment as he confronts what he fears is the loss of everything he has loved in the world.