“Captain Blood.”
For years, mention of the novel by Rafael Sabatini (1875–1950) about pirates in the Caribbean would pop up in my reading. These writers draped garlands of praise on “Captain Blood,” yet I never gave the novel even the courtesy of a glance. From its title alone, I figured this tale of a pirate on the high seas would offer little more than a hackneyed plot, cardboard characters, and overwrought prose.
