Honorable Company: A Novel of India Before the Raj

In a rousing follow-up to the critically acclaimed A Close Run Thing, Captain Matthew Hervey makes the hazardous sea voyage to India for what the Duke of Wellington has called “deuced tricky work.”

As Wellington’s new aide-de-camp, Matthew’s covert mission will embroil him in the jostling of native potentates and England’s encroaching East India Company — both threatened by lawless bands of horsemen bent on plunder and massacre.

When Matthew’s journeying leads him to the small key state of Chintal, he thinks himself close to his objective. But at the rajah’s sumptuous court, he discovers that war in India is waged as often with money and spies as with the clear-cut tactics of the battlefield — with battles won through devious conversations and murderous perfidy. And Matthew, torn between his honor and his destiny, is drawn deeper into the court’s serpentine coils than he ever dreamed....

Allan Mallinson is a serving cavalry officer in the British army and the author of Light Dragoons, a history of British cavalry. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Rome, where he is military attaché.