THE FRENCH EXECUTIONER
By C C Humphreys
Orion - January 2002
ISBN 0752846396 - Trade Paperback
Historical Adventure
1536, various European locations

Reviewed by: Rachel A Hyde, MyShelf.com
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Mix Dennis Wheatley with Paul Doherty and you have a soaring powerhouse of a historical adventure novel and this is it. Jean Rombaud has been fetched from France by Henry VIII as a final act of compassion to his thousand day queen Anne Boleyn - he is to execute her with his sword as he has done so expertly to so many other people. But it is her last wish for him to bury her six-fingered hand at a certain crossroads and he agrees, little knowing it is going to be a powerful relic that many people will want to steal for their own ends.

This act sets in motion a chain of amazing adventures involving a one-handed Swiss banker and his pet raven, a latter-day Viking, a mysterious young Jewish person and a swashbuckling former Janissary. With a villainous Borgia-like Italian prelate and a subterranean alchemist and thrilling fight scenes as two slave galleys battle it out, somehow you know this is going to be one of those books that doesn't let go until the final page has been turned, and not really even then. What we really need, I decided when I had finished reading this book, is a lot more of this sort of thing…