Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger's loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind. After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond. Destined to become a cult favorite, this frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks.
Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this melange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history. Richard James Bentley, who happens to look the part of a salty English sea captain, has trodden many paths and worn many hats. From his early work as a dealer in dodgy motorcars, he progressed to being a design engineer on a zeppelin project. Computers then caught his attention and he authored a number of incomprehensible technical manuals before turning to fiction. He has lived in Switzerland and the Netherlands and now spins yarns in the north of England. Greenbeard is his first novel.