Review: Keane’s Company by Iain Gale

You have to admire the chutzpah of Iain Gale. He’s a great author and I really like his book ‘Four Days in June’ as a story of Waterloo. However, writing a book about an adventuring officer in the Peninsular War and calling the protagonist Keane (Kean, Keen, Sharp, Sharpe geddit?) is a brave move.

Thankfully, Captain James Keane has a distinctly different personality to Richard Sharpe which makes this book both readable and notable, especially to players and GMs of Duty & Honour (D&H). Indeed, when I first read this book some time ago, I was so taken by the second act that I carved a whole D&H mini campaign out of it! Additionally, the premise of the story is a perfect set-up for a D&H game. They’re a match made in Heaven.

So what’s the gist of it? Brevet Capt. James Keane of the Inniskillings is in a pickle. He opens the book in a duel with another officer, which he wins, unfortunately by killing the man. Rather than drumming him out of the army, Wellington inexplicably confirms his promotion and orders him to gather a team of soldiers who will act as ‘Intelligence Officers’ – i.e. spies – and act behind enemy lines, gathering information. They are the precursors to the Corp of Guides, and present a wonderful alternative to a standard D&H group.

Keane dutifully recruits his chosen men, and a woman too, and it is these choices that really warmed me to the book, as there are some endearing characters with a bit more to them than we see in the peripheral characters in the Sharpe novels..

• Lt. Tom Morris is a friend of Keane’s and an officer in the artillery. He acts as his second in command, calming, cautious influence on the impulsive Keane.
• Sergeant Ross is, essentially, Patrick Harper with a Scottish accent. He’s a city man, from Glasgow, and definitely not a highlander.
• Heredia is a Portuguese cavalryman with a secret! He was condemned to death when he discovered a spy in the British ranks.
• Silver is a former sailor who has found his way into the army and was apparently with Nelson when he died.
• Gabriella is Silver’s wife, whom Keane bought out of servitude and prostitution to be with Silver. She’s fiery and respected by the men, and speaks a few languages too, which gets them out of some sticky moments with the locals..
• Gilpin is a master of disguise, something which comes in exceptionally handy across the book, including at least one almost Mission Impossible style reveal.
• Martin is probably the least developed of the characters, but he is an excellent shot with a rifle.

The troop head off in the second act and deal with the matter of getting the British army across the Douro to attack Oporto (Porto). This is an excellent piece of history-as-storytelling, and includes a side mission to recruit the guerillas to their side too. The third act is a bit strange as it involves a diplomatic mission to convince different factions in the guerillas to side with Wellington, and then morphs into a treasure hunt, and then into a very confusing battle which simply serves to put the hastily arranged subplot of Keane’s duelling victim’s friend – who happens to be Keane’s sweetheart’s brother, and has a vendetta against Keane in the right place at the right time for trouble.

Anyway, our galant troops come out all safe, the baddies are killed, everyone has lashings of money and the story fades before they’re off to Talavera for a little scrap. OK, the book does have massive pacing issues. Problems come and go very quickly and Keane seems to have nine lives with Wellington. The action is great, the interplay between the characters is spot on and the set up is sublime. So what’s wrong with it?

Well, James Keane is an absolute twat. He lies, he cheats, he steals, he constantly disobeys orders, and his attitude towards women is appalling. Remember, he is so smitten with his lady that he disobeys a direct order from Wellington to have nothing to do with her … but that doesn’t stop him from having a farmer’s daughter thrown in for the night as a makeweight in a deal for information on troop movements, and calling it ‘a cost of doing business’. Similarly, when Morris advises him not to play games with his lady, he says that ‘women exist to be manipulated’, and that’s that.

I’ve been putting in a lot of thought and research into how to represent the Regency moral attitudes within the game in a way which doesn’t simply reek of sexism at the table, and one of the conclusions I have reached is that the negative behaviours should be confined to villains, as is shown in a lot of the literature. Keane is coded as a villain in so many ways, but as a hero in others. It’s a little confusing!

So why is it good, then?

Well the set-up for the Company is excellent and the best model of a non-regimental group for D&H I have seen. You can almost write the character sheets for the men as they are described, and the roving brief of the Intelligencer allows for really good missions to be generated. Some of them even come with their own personal missions too. Even if the rest of the book doesn’t hold up, the first two acts are worth the price of admission.

The company is also set up as a cavalry troop. Outside of the Hervey books of Allan Mallinson, this is rare and offers a very different example of Peninsular warfare. Even with just seven men, Keane is confident to charge into battle as both a diversion, a stalling tactic and as a decisive blow to the enemy. It’s nice to see it play out in a genre that is usually all about volley fire of muskets and rifles.

Gabriella also needs a mention, as she is very much part of the team and not just another ‘camp follower’. While she does tend to get left behind when they go into battle, which seems sensible, she has her moments in the book too. She can speak English, Spanish and Portuguese, which helps in a scenario where they are trying to navigate different factions, and she isn’t afraid of using a knife either. It’s an interesting model for introducing a female PC into a D&H game.

The scene where Keane and Morillo play cards for the fortune in stolen monies retrieved from the French is another great example of a personal mission (Retrieve the Crowns) and a military mission (Secure the support of the Guerillas) weaving together and coming to a mutual conclusion. This feels like something that might happen at the table, where Keane is using his Gambling skill to win the Challenge, aided by the Deception of the French officer-prisoner, Fabier, as he acts as a secretly non-impartial banker for the card game. 

Keane’s Company is certainly a different tone to any of the other Peninsular fiction I have read over the years and that makes it a valuable read for that reason alone. It’s strange having a ‘hero’ that you actually dislike quite a bit, but that’s where I ended up with James Keane. It’s almost like an old school James Bond attitude that jars a little with modern sensibilities, and rubs me up the wrong way too many times. 

That said, I’ll be back to read – and review – Keane’s Challenge.