Gilding the lily

Molly Guinness on Allan Mallinson’s latest novel

Allan Mallinson’s hero, Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey, returns in Warrior with his usual mixture of courage and kindness, his talent for friendship and a military instinct that is second to none. The first scene shows us, with some high quality gore, that there is trouble in the Cape Colony: ‘He fired the carbine point-blank, taking off the top of the spearman’s head like a badly sliced egg.’ We are then transported to London, where Hervey is tied up for a few days with some complex administrative tasks; he has to organise a funeral, have conversations with a nun, his wife, a bishop, his former lover and various important figures in his regiment. The conversations and journeys to and fro across London do rather seem to happen in real time, but they serve to show that Hervey’s qualities are by no means confined to the battlefield.