The Sinbad Novels Part A: Action and Passion & Sinbad the Soldier

Volume two of The Collected Novels of P. C. Wren, The Sinbad Novels, contains the four novels featuring the character of Sinclair Noel Brodie Dysart, whose nickname Sinbad derives from the initials of S.N.B.D. Part A contains Action and Passion and its sequel, Sinbad the Soldier. In Action and Passion, Sinbad was intended to go into the Royal Navy, but instead, after his father’s suicide, has to go into the Merchant Marine. During his first voyage, on the windjammer Valkyrie, Sinbad goes from an apprentice to the captain, during a series of adventures that include a mad captain, multiple murders, mutiny, bare-knuckle boxing, sea storms, and (almost) incest. In Sinbad the Soldier, our hero and his friend Dacre decide to leave the sea. They join Her Majesty’s Life Guards, a troop famous (nowadays) for being part of the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace and other royal sites. After a couple of years as Life Guards, Sinbad and Dacre resign from the Guards and join a gunrunning venture. The gunrunning goes awry when Sinbad is captured by Arabs and sold into slavery, eventually becoming a slave to a Sultan of a remote Saharan desert kingdom. The Sultan and Sinbad, along with some of the Sultan’s entourage, go to Mecca for the Hajj pilgrimage and to rescue the Sultan’s mother, an Englishwoman who was taken captive during the failed Sepoy Rebellion of 1857.