ALEXANDER FULLERTON novels

NO MAN'S MISTRESS

Blurbs

FOR his new novel Alexander Fullerton returns with telling effect to his first love, the sea, and the experiences of those who go down to the sea in ships: more specifically the Royal Navy in time of war. No Man's Mistress is not, however, like Surface!, a tale of submarine warfare, though submarines play their part in it. The action, of which there is no lack, takes place on board. H.M.S. Pelorus, a cruiser stationed in the Mediterranean during the period when the army was hard pressed in the Libyan desert and the fate of Malta hung in the balance.

To those stirring days James Wentworth, retired and a farmer, looks back—more than that, they return to him with a peculiar intensity through an all-night conversation with Peter Tregarth (now in command of a submarine) whom he seeks out at the Annual Summer Ball at Fort Blockhouse. Peter Tregarth and he, had been midshipmen together in the Pelorus; and Peter Tregarth and he, without realising it, shared a strange personal secret which forms the underlying theme and eventual denouement of No Man's Mistress.
With its memorable battle-pieces and deep understanding of human problems, No Man's Mistress is an outstanding novel of naval warfare and is guaranteed to appeal to all readers of Surface!

The author

Alexander Fullerton is well-qualified to write novels with a naval background; he comes from a naval family, and went to the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth at the age of 13 in 1937. He went to sea as a midshipman at the end of 1941, serving first in the Mediterranean — in the battleship Queen Elizabeth, cruiser Orion and destroyer Hero, before joining submarines at Malta — and later in the North Sea and Far East; he ended the war as a lieutenant with a mention-indespatches for distinguished service. He resigned from the navy in 1949, and worked for ten years in South Africa. During this period, he had his first novel published — SURFACE! — based on his experience as gunnery and torpedo officer on the submarine Seadog. SURFACE! has so far sold nearly a million copies around the world. Since his return to England in 1958, he has published other kinds of fiction — including the novels CHIEF EXECUTIVE, THE PUBLISHER and OTHER MEN'S WIVES — but is now `back at sea' for good.