Cmdr. Peter Wake, Office of Naval Intelligence, is in French Indochina in 1883 on a secret mission for President Chester Arthur.

The novel opens with Wake aboard a riverboat on the Mekong River. The mission sounded simple in Washington: deliver the American president's reply to a confidential naval offer from the king of Cambodia, while clandestinely assessing the region's political and military situation. Wake figures it will take two more weeks and he'll be homeward bound.

Six months later, after nearly dying at the hands of opium warlords, Chinese-Malay pirates, and French gangsters; after suffering starvation at sea, surviving a typhoon, being marooned on a beach, and enduring a horrific full-scale battle--Wake is still there. Exhausted, frustrated, and scared, he and his motley band of companions can now testify that nothing is simple in the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Empire of Vietnam.

This story illuminates the beginning of the bloody cultural clash that lasted for the next hundred years in Southeast Asia, with each side determined to avenge their honored dead.

"The Honored Dead" is the seventh in the award-winning Honor Series of naval historical fiction following the life and career of Lt. Cmdr. Peter Wake from 1863 to 1907, a time when the United States Navy helped America become a global power.

The previous novels are "At the Edge of Honor" (winner of the Patrick D. Smith Literary Award as Best Historical Novel of Florida), "Point of Honor "(winner of the John Esten Cooke Literary Award for Best Work in Southern Fiction), "Honorable Mention, A Dishonorable Few, An Affair of Honor, " and "A Different Kind of Honor "(winner of the American Library Association's Boyd Literary Award for Military Fiction).

Winner of the W.Y Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction for 2008. It's 1879 and Lt. Cmdr. Peter Wake, U.S.N., is on special assignment as the official American neutral naval observer to the War of the Pacific raging along the west coast of South America. Chile, having invaded Bolivia, has gone on to overrun Peru and controls the entire southeastern Pacific region. Washington, concerned over European involvement in the war and the French effort to build a canal through Panama, has sent Wake to observe local events. During Wake's dangerous mission--as naval observer, diplomat, and spy--he will witness history's first battle between ocean-going ironclads, ride the world's first deep-diving submarine, face his first machine guns in combat, advise the French trying to build the Panama Canal, and run for his life in the Catacombs of the Dead in Lima, Peru.

This is the fourth book in the Honor series of Historical Naval Fiction, which also includes the award-winning At the Edge of Honor, Point of Honor, and Honorable Mention. The Civil War is over, and now Lt. Peter Wake is hunting pirates in South America and the Caribbean.

Winner of the John Esten Cook Literary Award for Best Work in Southern Fiction In 1864 Wake is at the helm of a schooner, the St. James, searching for deserters in the Dry Tortugas and off the coast of Mexico. ?If you're a fan of nineteenth-century naval history and/or the Civil War, this is a book for you. If not, this book could make you one.? ? The Historical Novel Review

Honorable Mention, the third volume in the award-winning "Honor" series, covers the tumultuous end of the Civil War in Florida and the Caribbean, from the re-election of Lincoln in 1864 to the relocation of former Confederates to Latin America in 1866. Now in command of the steamer U.S.S. Hunt, Lt. Peter Wake quickly plunges into action, chasing a strange vessel during a tropical storm off Cuba, dealing with a seductively dangerous woman during a mission in enemy territory ashore, confronting death to liberate an escaping slave ship, and coming face to face with the enemy's most powerful ocean warship in Havana's harbor. Finally, in January 1866, when he tracks down a colony of former Confederates in Puerto Rico, Wake becomes involved in a deadly twist of irony.

Robert Macomber's Honor series of naval fiction follows the life and career of Peter Wake in the U.S. Navy during the tumultuous years from 1863 to 1901. At the Edge of Honor is the first in the series and winner of the Patrick D. Smith Literary Award as Best Historical Novel of Florida. The year is 1863. The Civil War is leaving its bloody trail across the nation as Peter Wake, born and bred in the snowy North, joins the U.S. Navy as a volunteer officer and arrives in steamy Florida for duty with the East Gulf Blockading Squadron. The idealistic Peter Wake has handled boats before, but he's new to the politics and illicit liaisons that war creates among men. Assigned to the Rosalie, a tiny, armed sloop, Captain Wake commands a group of seasoned seamen on a series of voyages to seek and arrest Confederate blockade-runners and sympathizers, from Florida's coastal waters through to near the remote out-islands of the Bahamas. Wake risks his reputation when he falls in love with Linda Donahue, whose father is a Confederate zealot, and steals away to spend precious hours with her at her Key West home. Their love is tested as Wake learns he must make the ugly decisions of war even in a beautiful, tropical paradise-decisions that take him up to the edge of honor.

In this second of Robert Macomber's historical novels of the naval Civil War in Florida, the year is 1864 and Peter Wake, U.S.N., assisted by his indomitable Irish bosun, Sean Rork, is at the helm of the schooner St. James, a larger ship than his first command in At the Edge of Honor. Wake's remarkable ability to make things happen continues as he searches for army deserters in the Dry Tortugas, discovers an old nemesis during a standoff with the French Navy on the coast of Mexico, starts a drunken tavern riot in Key West, and confronts incompetent Federal army officers during an invasion of upper Florida. Along the way, Wake's personal life takes a new tack when he risks reputation for love by returning to the arms of his forbidden sweet-heart, the daughter of a Confederate zealot. Key West provides a unique setting for them to prove that their love is strong enough to overcome the insanity of the war. And through it all, even when surrounded by the swirling confusion of danger and political intrigue, Peter Wake maintains his dedication to balance on the point of honor.