The Wind and The Sea by Marsha Canham *****

I do love me some swashbucklin' Marsha Canham pirate romance! And this one is classic - non-stop wind in the hair, pirate-heroine as fierce as the gentleman hero, salt crusted secondary characters, lots of violence and courage and spies and tussling between the sheets - arrrrr!

Courtney passes as young boy Curt until Adrian, the British lieutenant hero, rips her bodice, er, man's shirt to reveal - whoops! - creamy flesh. Courtney's father and his partner are thought caught and hung on the Barbary Coast, but Courtney feels they are still alive and she must avenge the wrongs done to them by these British pigs, well, at least except for when she's tussling between the sheets with her avowed enemy and captor, Tall Blonde and Handsome Adrian of Virginia.

There's so much spying and intrigue - an alleged spy amongst the pirates who sold them out the to British, an alleged spy amongst the Brits who is selling them out to the pirates, the Arabs, the French and anyone else who will pay a little coin for government secrets. There's some misdirection - was the second lieutenant the spy, or just bragging? And the code word Seawolf - could Courtney's father have been the traitor?

Wow - Canham really evokes Errol Flynn movies she imagines with her prose, surrounding you with the howling wind and salty sea air and lust and death and intrigue and... It's definitely bodice-ripping, 5 star entertainment!