TO THE WALLS OF CARTAGENA

To the walls of Cartagena and to Jamaica from Virginia in the service of the king and in search of fortune--too easily found. Old-time villain music can almost be heard as the wicked enter, and the guys in the white hats are equally obvious: the solution to the financial woes of some kindly (but bankrupt) merchants and our own young adventurer is the fortuitous appearance of a vast buried treasure. Greg Shelby, prospective law student wrenched from his studies when an evildoer does his dad out of some land, signs on to fight the War of Jenkins' Ear (1738) in the West Indies. His comrades suffer and die but he doesn't; he arrives home well-fed, well-connected (with governors as friends) and much richer. Predictable, stilted, and mainly de ja vu.