THE ADAM HORNE ADVENTURES. 3 VOLUME SET. 1. THE BOMBAY MARINES. 2. THE WAR CHEST. 3. CHINA FLYER.

London: Souvenir Press, 1985, 1986, 1987., 1985. 220 pp, 220 pp, 203 pp, 8vo (8 3/4" H) - 3 volumes. ISBNs 0285626515, 0285627139 & 0285627805. B&w maps. From the dust jacket of 'The Bombay Marines': "Newly returned from a successful assignment to rid the Arabian Sea of pirates, Captain Adam Horne of the frigate 'Eclipse' is summoned to the presence of his commading officer, Commodore Watson, head of the East India Company's private fighting unit, the much derided Bombay Marines. It is 1761, and Pondicherry, last stronghold of the French in the Indian subcontinent, has just fallen to the British. Now Captain Horne is given a strange and secret mission: to capture the defeated French commander Thomas Lally, from his prison at Fort St. George in Madras - or the unit will be disbanded for failure. Due to the deployment of most of the Marines on the east coast of India, Horne's force is seriously undermanned. He is left with only one choice: to take his pick of the motley collection of thieves, rapists and murderers held in the prisons of Bombay Castle and subject them to intensive training for the most closely guarded campaign of the Seven Years' War. Drawing on a wealth of historical characters and events, and on little-studied documents of the East India Company's early history, the action moves from sea to land, from the colourful waterfront of Bombay to the sadistic penal colony of Bull Island and the final, cataclysmic denouement within the walls of Fort St. George. In Captain Adam Horne Porter Hill has created a character as vivid as Hornblower and Ramage, a man who has rejected the prestige of service in the Royal Navy or the East India Company's Maritime Service for the dashing, dare-devil life of history's first commando-style unit, operating amid the exotic dangers of Britain's most coveted oriental territories." Very faint cigarette odour, minor browning to pages and edges of textblocks of one volume, light browning to pages and top of textblocks of two volumes, very small bump to top corners of boards of one volume. Dust jackets have minor edge wrinkling - "Bombay Marines" has wrinkling at top of flap-folds and tiny dint on front hinge, minor browning at top edges.. First Editions.. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good+. Illus. by Wraparound dust jacket illustrations by Paul Wright..