One of the early novels of Rafael Sabatini; the title is an old term for an indian summer occurring around the Feast of St. Martin on November 11th. It's set technically in the Best Period, the reign of Louis XIII, though specifically in the period of his mother's regency during his minority (thus somewhere between 1610 and 1617), and concerns something as traditional as a damosel kept captive in a castle, if you can believe that such books really exist. (Much like detective stories where the butler did it, this type of narrative turns out to actually be rather thin on the ground when you look, and it's hard to make out exactly how it became a cliché to begin with.)
The main attraction of this particular story is unquestionably the protagonist, Garnache, who while he has all the traditional virtues of the swashbuckling hero also has a hilariously violent temper; he's repeatedly about to win when he fucks things up by getting insanely furious at the intransigence and bullshit of stupid assholes and lashing out and wrecking his own careful planning. He's also been sent by a woman to save a woman from another woman despite the fact that he hates bitches, which is a fairly rich vein of humor.
It can hardly be said that this is his best work, but if you like adventure stories yet dislike Sabatini's habitual narrative conveniences, Saint Martin's Summer is a good choice; nobody turns out to be secretly related to anybody else, there are few or no preposterous coïncidences, and whenever the protagonist briefly acts like a complete moron it's reasonably justified. A man in his forties is still going to marry an 18-year-old, though, it is a Sabatini novel. Suck it, Mrs. Grundy!
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