The Last Legionnaire (Jack Lark, Book 5): A dark military adventure of strength and survival on the battlefields of Europe

Description

Paul Fraser Collard's series continues with THE LAST LEGIONNAIRE, which sees Jack marching into the biggest battle Europe has ever known. Jack Lark has come a long way since his days as a gin palace pot boy. But can he surrender the thrill of freedom to return home? London, 1859. After years fighting for Queen and country, Jack walks back into his mother's East End gin palace a changed man. Haunted by the horrors of battle, and the constant fight for survival, he longs for a life to call his own. But the city - and its people - has altered almost beyond recognition, and Jack cannot see a place for himself there. A desperate moment leaves him indebted to the Devil - intelligence officer Major John Ballard, who once again leads Jack to the battlefield with a task he can't refuse. He tried to deny being a soldier once. He won't make the same mistake again. Europe is about to go to war. Jack Lark will march with them.

Paul's love of military history started at an early age. A childhood spent watching films like Waterloo and Zulu whilst reading Sharpe, Flashman and the occasional Commando comic, gave him a desire to know more of the men who fought in the great wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At school, Paul was determined to become an officer in the British Army and he succeeded in winning an Army Scholarship. However, Paul chose to give up his boyhood ambition and instead went into the finance industry. Paul stills works in the City, and lives with his wife and three children in Kent.

Collard ... evokes the horror of that era with great brio. Enthralling - The Times I love a writer who wears his history lightly enough for the story he's telling to blaze across the pages like this. Jack Lark is an unforgettable new hero - Anthony Riches It felt accurate, it felt real, it felt alive... Every line every paragraph and page of the battles had me hooked, riveted to the page, there were times when I was almost as breathless as the exhausted soldiers - Parmenion Books Brilliant - Bernard Cornwell