‘Bitter almonds’

Spanish Eye contains 22 cases from Leon Cazador, half-English, half-Spanish private eye.  Its release date is 29 November, from Crooked Cat Publishing.

Most of these cases are based on true events…  The short story ‘Bitter Almonds’ was first published in magazine format in 2005: here is a very brief excerpt:

 

Bitter Almonds

“He needs his belief in human nature to be restored.”

 “You know, Leon,” Arturo Martinez said three weeks ago, “even with the water shortage, it looks like my crop’s going to be all right.”

I thought he was luckier than many fellow almond growers further north, like Xixona, for example, where there were real worries about desertification of the soil.

He was proud of his hectares of almond trees that he’d nurtured since inheriting them from his father twenty years before.

Arturo was a man of the earth in every sense. Not for him the trappings of modern wealth. I sometimes berated him over his wife, Carmen, using an old top-loader washtub and mangle. “She isn’t getting any younger,” I said, though I’m sure she wouldn’t thank me for saying so. “Surely you can afford to buy her a new appliance and save her all that drudgery!”

Well, I said it was brief…

From time to time news reports echo the Cazador tales, and this is but one of them, from the Costa Blanca News of August 23, 2013:

 

Sadly, forest fires are an annual occurrence in Spain, sometimes caused by carelessness, not arsonists. Carelessness can be criminal, however. To learn how this pertains to Arturo Martinez, and what happens, please read the book…

Paperback worldwide postfree here

Kindle UK here

 

Kindle US etc here

Cold comfort

Yesterday, I woke to find my left arm didn’t want to rise above shoulder height without great pain, and typing was painful too. Lends a new meaning to ‘writing is pain’. So my time at the keyboard has been limited.

I must have pulled a muscle while carrying a couple of 12.5kg butane gas cylinders – required to heat our home in this warm climate that Ian Duncan Smith and his minions envision.

 

The e-petition 'Stop the Governments victimisation of pensioners living abroad who have contributed to the welfare state by withdrawing their winter fuel payment' recently reached 14,796 signatures and a response has been made to it.

As this e-petition has received more than 10,000 signatures, the relevant Government department have provided the following response:

“The Government remains committed to protecting key support for older people for the life of this Parliament, in line with Coalition Agreement. Winter Fuel Payments are non-contributory and were originally introduced to give older people in the UK the reassurance they can keep warm during cold weather. However, following a European Court judgment, Winter Fuel Payments are now also made to eligible people living outside the UK in another European Economic Area (EEA) Member State and Switzerland. To help return to the original policy intention, the Government intends to bring in an eligibility criterion, effective from winter 2015/16, based on country of residence with Winter Fuel Payments going only to eligible people living in EEA countries with colder climates.” This e-petition remains open to signatures and will be considered for debate by the Backbench Business Committee should it pass the 100,000 signature threshold.”

In other words, nothing has changed; they're not listening. Am I surprised?

So, in effect, as predicted in my blog here, they’ll play with statistics to exclude expat pensioners who have and indeed in many cases still are paying UK taxes. Their get-out clause is that the winter fuel payment is ‘non-contributory’ which suggests that tax-payers didn’t contribute, which is a load of baloney, since any money that the government hands out is from the taxpayer – past and present.

Cold comfort, indeed.

 

FFB – The Ladies’ Paradise

The popular BBC television series, now in its second season, The Paradise, is based on this book by Emil Zola. First published in French as Au Bonheur des Dames in 1883, it is in fact the eleventh novel in his series, The Rougon-Macquart Cycle, which in twenty volumes depicts two branches, one legitimate (Rougon), one illigitimate (Macquart), of a family from Plassans, a town in the south of France, considered to be Zola’s fictionalised version of his home Aix-en-Provence. In its wider context, it’s also the story about the period of France’s Second Empire, the authoritarian regime of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III (1850s-1870s).

The Ladies’ Paradise encapsulates in luxurious detail the new phenomenon of consumer society – obsessed with image, fashion and instant gratification, laying bare the department store in 1860s Paris. Octave Mouret is a business genius who transforms a modest draper’s shop into a hugely successful retail enterprise, masterfully exploiting the desires of his female customers and ruining small businesses in the process. Sound familiar?

Through the eyes of trainee salesgirl Denise, we see the inner workings of the store and the relations and intrigues among the staff, human dramas played out alongside the relentless pursuit of profit. The various characters find themselves torn between the conflicting forces of love, loyalty and ambition. (Arthur Hailey did something similar with his books in the 1960s and 1970s [Hotel, Airport, Wheels, Moneychangers, Overload etc]; surprisingly, he never examined a department store; maybe he’d thought it had been done so well by Zola!)

Zola evokes the giddy pace of Paris’ transition into a modern city and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations that were occurring in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Not lost in translation

I bought two versions of the book as Christmas presents. Interestingly, the translations differ, which is to be expected. The job of a translator is not to literally transcribe word-for-word from one language to another; indeed, that’s impossible, because different cultures have different idioms, phrases and even several meanings for certain words. In the new language, there must be a constant battle between accurate translation and narrative flow.

Here you’ll find the opening two paragraphs from Chapter One. You might like to note the subtle changes employed by the translators. Doubtless, a third translator would opt for another slight variant. Either could appear as a draft version in English – certainly, some authors would vary their prose to this degree, striving for clarity and style.

The Ladies’ Paradise, translation April Fitzlyon, 1957,2008: Alma Classics, 2012.

Denise had come on foot from Saint-Lazare station where, after a night spent on the hard bench of a third-class carriage, she and her two brothers had been set down by a train from Cherbourg. She was holding Pepe’s hand, and Jean was following her; they were all three aching from the journey, scared and lost in the midst of the vast city of Paris. Noses in the air, they were looking at the houses, and at each cross-road they asked the way to the Rue de la Michodiere where their Uncle Baudu lived. But, just as she was finally emerging into the Place Gaillon, the girl stopped short in surprise.
            “Oh!” she said. “Just have a look at that, Jean!”

The Ladies’ Paradise, translation Brian Nelson, 1995: Oxford University Press, 2012

Denise had come on foot from the Gare Saint-Lazsare. She and her two brothers had arrived on a train from Cherbourg and had spent the night on the hard bench of a third-class carriage. She was holding Pepe by the hand, and Jean was walking behind her, all three exhausted from the journey, frightened and lost in the midst of the vast city of Paris. They kept looking up at the houses, and at every intersection they asked the way to the Rue de la Michodiere, where their uncle Baudu lived. But on arriving in the Place Gaillon, the young girl suddenly stopped in surprise.
            “Oh!” she said, “look at that, Jean!”

In a later blog, I'll look at other books that have been translated. The world of reading is a richer place thanks to translators. I will also write about the book of the film (TV series)...

‘Straitened times’

Spanish Eye contains 22 cases from Leon Cazador, half-English, half-Spanish private eye.  Its release date is 29 November, from Crooked Cat Publishing.

The vast majority of these cases are based on true events…  The short story ‘Adopted Country’ was first published in magazine format in 2006: here is a very brief excerpt:

 

Adopted Country

“...treat cynically with the impoverished to further their dark ends.”

 

On a clear day like today, I felt I could almost reach out and touch Africa. I stood alongside my brother, Juan, on the seashore of Tarifa, Spain’s southernmost tip. Juan was the Guardia Civil officer supervising the capture of yet another boatload of illegal immigrants.

Earlier, squinting out to sea as the Guardia Civil launch intercepted the over-laden longboat, Juan had said, “It isn’t surprising, Leon, is it? North Africa is only fourteen kilometres away from where we stand. They want an easier and better life here in Europe so they’ll risk everything in the attempt.”

“No, Juan, it isn’t surprising.”

Now, I watched with a heavy heart as medical teams and officials, flanked by Juan’s men, swooped on the women, men and children who clambered wearily from the beached vessel. The area was ring-fenced with police carrying machine guns.

It was a motley collection of humanity: pregnant women with hypothermia, children whose ribcages were visible through the taut skin, and once-strong lithe men with exhausted faces and wary eyes. A short distance, but often a treacherous journey. Even though they were staring down the barrels of guns, these were the lucky ones. Countless people died making the crossing every year. Desperation does that.

Since my country’s agreement with Morocco and the erection of barbed wire along the common border, it is now virtually impossible to enter Spain through the Ceuta route. So thousands go further along the North African coast and pay their entire savings to board any old boat that will sail for Tarifa or some other beach along the southern coast of Spain. Thousands even attempt the seven hundred mile crossing to the Canary Islands, and many more perish in the attempt.

Sadly, over forty years of independence hasn’t made the African nations a better and safer place to live. All kinds of bloodletting conflict has left the land poorer and thrust millions on the asylum-seeking trail.

Well, I said it was brief…

From time to time Guardia Civil reports echo the Cazador tales, and this is but one of them, from the Costa Blanca News of September 30, 2013:

 

Often, these days, illegal immigrants attempt to cross from North Africa to Spain (and Italy and France). This is a growing problem because of the unsettled state of the Dark Continent and the war-threatened north African countries. Why Cazador is there and what happens next, well, please read the book…

Spanish Eye paperback post-free worldwide here

 

Kindle UK - here

Kindle Amazon com here

Writing tips - Taking the Michael… What’s in a name?

Well, quite a lot, actually. Almost everybody is happy with their name, even proud of it, and won’t take kindly to being ridiculed because of it. Names enable us to be individuals. We don’t take kindly to having our name being taken in vain.

http://www.bookdepository.com has a large selection of this type of book (post-free)

There may be four Michaels in your acquaintance, but they’re all different – even if each one prefers to be called Mike. Prefer – that’s the thing. If one Michael opts for Mick, fine, that’s his choice. If Patricia elects to be called Pat, that’s fine too.

This is in the real world.

However, in the world of fiction, it’s recommended that you don’t use the same name or variants, unless there’s a very valid plot reason. Because similar names have the potential to confuse the reader. Just because you can cope with four Michaels in your life, it’s not necessarily so easy for your readers, as they haven’t got your history of friendship and acquaintance and visual clues to fall back on to avoid confusion.

So, my plea to writers is, make life easy for the reader: one Michael, please. Or John. Or Jane. Or Alice… I’ve read a book with three Toms in its pages, all unrelated.

I know it isn’t easy, believe me. When I started writing short stories, if I was writing about an old chap, he was always called Alfred. (Maybe subconsciously I was thinking of Bruce Wayne’s butler). I quickly realised and changed it; certain names spring to mind at once, and there you go, you’ve got your character christened. Maybe sometimes it would be wise to rethink. Is the name appropriate?

Some names are hard-sounding, and therefore preferable for a villain – or a bold hero. If you’ve got a tough heroine, then try to settle on a name that conveys that toughness too. For example, Rapunzel doesn’t quite do it – indeed, no long name does. One of my heroines is called Tana Standish – so her first name is short, quite hard, and her surname is old and suggestive of high nautical rank. It’s a perception thing, and it may be misguided, but that’s how it works. There's nothing to stop you writing against perceptions, of course, but at least be wary of their existence.

Another name issue to avoid is beginning character names with the same letter. Some names can be so different even though beginning with an ‘S’, for example, that they’ll never be confused by the reader. Fine. But why invite confusion? It isn’t as if there aren’t plenty of alternatives in the world. I’ve got a book of First Names, but recourse to the Internet will produce countless examples, in virtually any nationality. Researching your character’s name can bring up interesting meanings, too.

‘I’ll never understand why Tolkien settled on two villains with the names Sauron and Saruman!’ – Write a Western in 30 Days (p89).

You can buy this book post-free worldwide here

The final name issue is those names ending in ‘s’ – Jones, Landers etc. Nothing wrong with that, of course. So long as you’re comfortable with the possessive apostrophe.
Modern writing seems to allow Jones’ – that is, with no subsequent apostrophe ‘s’; although it’s preferable to write Jones’s. To some extent it may depend on the publishing house rules. The final arbiter can be Fowler or Strunk and White, of course.

Purists will insist that only Jesus is entitled to not have a possessive ‘s’ – Jesus’ sandals are leather, for example. (See p56, Lynne Truss’ book Eats, Shoots & Leaves (2003)

You can buy this book post-free worldwide here

Whatever your choice, be consistent – and make sure it’s right. Jone’s is wrong, but we all know that.

Then there’s the plural, where there’s more than one in the family – keeping up with the Joneses; no apostrophe, because there’s simply more of them, that’s all. It could be keeping up with the Barnets; same applies.

I maintain a spread-sheet for my Leon Cazador stories (Spanish Eye has 22 of them). To date, that lists 98 different names used in those tales; I try to avoid using the same first letter for characters in the same story, and it enables me to keep track of who appeared when and where, in case any, such as relatives or villains, crop up again.

You can buy this book POST-FREE WORLDWIDE here

 

And we’ve barely touched upon the meaning of a character’s name. That perhaps is another article, to name but a few still to come.

Where do characters come from?

Author of BREATH OF AFRICA Jane Bwye invited me over to her blog today to talk about where characters come from... here

I discuss the nun from Pain Wears No Mask, the hero of my first published book, Death at Bethesda Falls, and Leon Cazador, the private eye, among a few others.

Torn from the news – ‘endangered species’

Spanish Eye contains 22 cases from Leon Cazador, half-English, half-Spanish private eye.  Its just been published by Crooked Cat Publishing.

The vast majority of these cases are based on true events…  The short story ‘Endangered Species’ was first published in magazine format in 2006: here is a very brief excerpt:

Endangered Species

 “She ensures you get the best product

your money can buy.”

He had large eyes, big ears and, surprisingly, his middle finger was very long on each hand.

“He looks cute,” I said, lowering the photograph of the little aye-aye. His hair was black, and he had a long bushy tail. His eyes seemed to be expressing surprise at finding himself in a cage rather than the diminishing rainforests of Madagascar. Perhaps the daylight conditions affected him, too, which wasn’t strange really, as his kind is nocturnal. “But,” I added, shaking my head in mock concern, “my fiancée wants something a bit more exotic. Know what I mean?”

“A pity, Señor Santos, because we have many aye-ayes.” Lazaro Perez shrugged his broad shoulders as if the fate of his primates was of little concern to him.

It was a hot day, as usual, and we were glad of the air-conditioning in the roadside bar. Condensation formed little globules on the sides of our small glasses of Mahou beer. The plates had recently contained tasty tapas but were now empty, save for the odd breadcrumb.

Brushing a few crumbs off the table, Perez slid across another colour photograph. “This, I think, will be more to your fiancée’s taste, no?”

In times like these, I wondered what in my childhood had influenced me to lie so well. While I certainly had a lady close to my heart, I had no fiancée. My calling required that I adopted an alias from time to time, and as far as Perez and his business associates were concerned, I was Carlos Ortiz Santos, rather than my true self, Leon Cazador. What was one’s true self, though? I shook off such heavy introspective thoughts and studied the photograph.

*

For the rest, please read Spanish Eye…

From time to time news reports echo the Cazador tales, and this is but one of them. According to some reports, the US is the third biggest market for products obtained from this illegal trade: every Chinatown is a magnet…

Yesterday, it was reported that Prince William stated, ‘Each one of us can help by raising our voices to support [the fight against this evil]. We have to be the generation that stopped the illegal wildlife trade.’ Next February, he and others will set up a summit to urge the governments of 50 countries to fight back. See my blog of ________________.

And here’s an excerpt from my book Blood of the Dragon Trees:

‘Tigers are being hunted to extinction,’ Andrew Kirby said, ‘but I’m sure you know that.’

            Condescending swine, Laura thought, and nodded.

‘Well, tiger bone is supposed to help rheumatism. The poor animal’s nose is used for treating epilepsy and its brain gets rid of pimples and cures laziness!’

            ‘You’re kidding me, aren’t you?’ She lowered her Dorada glass, and licked the foam off her upper lip. ‘This is the twenty-first century, you know.’

            He shook his head and said ruefully, ‘I wish I was kidding. Believe it or not, Chinese stores in UK sell this banned stuff – and a lot more besides. And similar shops exist throughout Europe.’

She put out a hand and rested it on Andrew’s. ‘That’s absolutely awful. Maybe they’re only wild animals, but they’re beautiful creatures and don’t deserve to be slaughtered for idiotic reasons like removing pimples!’

            Andrew sighed. ‘If it were only so simple. For over a thousand years, the poor old tiger has been known for its supposed healing powers – pills, creams, plasters, powders in traditional Chinese medicines. And it’s not just tigers they rely on for their medicines: leopard and rhino are slaughtered to pander to their needs.’

            ‘I know the rhino isn’t the most attractive of creatures, but even I have heard that the white rhino is close to extinction.’ She smiled, gazing into memory. ‘Their babies, like the hippos, are cute, just miniatures of their parents…’

            ‘Cute doesn’t cut it where big money’s involved, Laura. Not so long ago, 150 rhino horns, valued at over two million pounds, were seized in a couple of London lock-ups.’

 

Spanish Eye paperback - UK here

Spanish Eye paperback Amazon com here

Spanish Eye uk kindle here

Spanish Eye Amazon com kindle here

Blood of the Dragon Trees uk paperback here

Blood of the Dragon Trees uk kindle here

Blood of the Dragon Trees Amazon com kindle here

Make a date - 1 December etc

Some time ago I published a regular monthly column linking a set selection of dates in history. The series was popular. I'm busy coordinating the articles into book form. As today is 1 December, here are a number of linked events for that date plus two other December dates. To avoid repetition, I've simply indicated the relevant date in brackets. The three dates for this article are:

1, 10 and 24 December

The sale of dates greatly increases over the Christmas period and this month you could easily get a surfeit of dates. Still, they’re good for you. Unlike lampreys, apparently.

Henry I died (1) from food poisoning in 1135, having had a surfeit of lampreys in Normandy.

It begs the question, though, why would anyone want to eat even one lamprey?

A lamprey resembles an eel in outward appearance but is actually a jawless fish that has no scales and has cartilage instead of bones and is sort of in between a vertebrate and an invertebrate; it’s a parasite and sucks the blood of other fish.

When Britain actually had a fishing fleet, we fought three cod wars against Iceland - 1958, 1972 and 1975 - all over fishing rights and the limits of territorial water; my ship HMS Mermaid was holed by an Icelandic vessel packed with concrete; the damage control ratings and chippy (carpenter) did a fantastic job of shoring up the big gash in our side. Iceland (1) became a self-governing kingdom in 1918, though it remained part of Denmark.

On the same day in 1835, one of Denmark’s most famous citizens, Hans Christian Andersen, published (1) his first book of fairy tales. Twelve years later in 1847 Andersen visited England for the first time and was a great success in society. Charles Dickens invited him to stay for a fortnight but Andersen ignored the writer’s hints to leave and stayed a further four weeks! Shortly afterwards, Dickens published David Copperfield in which Uriah Heep is supposed to be modelled on Andersen.

 

That same year, one of Dickens’s contemporary writers published Vanity Fair, set at the time of the Napoleonic wars. William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel was an immediate success. Thackeray died (24) in 1863, leaving the world forever with one of literature’s most fascinating immoral female characters, Becky Sharp.

A particularly sharp operator was Howard Hughes, who was born (24) in 1905. One of Hughes’ lovers was film star Ava Gardner; she was born (24) on the same day as Hughes, but in 1922. At one time Howard Hughes was the richest man in the world. He was a film writer and director, pilot, designer of the half-cup bra for his Hollywood discovery Jane Russell and in later life a hypochondriac recluse. An excellent film about him is The Aviator.

Ava Gardner

In essence, flight defies gravity. Which Isaac Newton would be familiar with, considering that in 1684 he began to propound (10) his theories about the motion of celestial bodies culminating in his Principia, published in 1687, considered by many to be the greatest scientific book ever written.

Newton led to the law of universal gravitation which explained a wide range of previously unrelated phenomena: the eccentric orbits of comets, the tides and their variations, the precession of the Earth’s axis, and motion of the Moon as perturbed by the gravity of the Sun.

Czech astronomer and physician Tadéas Hájek was born (1) in 1525. He published his studies of a supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia in 1572 and counted among his contacts such luminaries as Tycho Brahe, Kepler and John Dee. Many regarded him as the greatest astronomer of his time.

And, like Dee, he was also fascinated with astrology, which wasn't unusual for scientists of the period. A crater of the moon and an asteroid have been named after Hájek.

A fascinating aspect of scientific research in our past is that these men - and women - were able to span several sciences at once, as well as philosophy. Today, where science is now ‘pure’, any moral sense - perhaps supplied by philosophy - sometimes seems missing.

 
The thoroughly amoral Lord Byron was the father of Ada Lovelace, one of the earliest computer programmers. She was born (10) in 1815 and a few weeks later the poet abandoned her mother and child. Byron went abroad and when Ada was eight he died in Greece while fighting for freedom from the Turks. Her mother brought up Ada to be a mathematician, what she thought was the antithesis of a poet.
 
In her teens, Ada met Charles Babbage and helped him with his Analytical Engine and her writings on the subject became the premier text on what became known as computer programming.

Ada’s prescient comments included predictions that such a calculating machine might be used to compose complex music, to produce graphics, and would be used for both practical and scientific use. Cancer claimed her in 1852, at exactly the same age as her father had died - thirty-six. At her request she was buried next to her father. Poetic, that.

The poet Emily Dickinson was born (10) in 1830 and lived twenty years longer than Ada. While Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends. She is now almost universally considered to be one of the most important American poets.

 
American-born expat Lady Astor, was the first female MP, taking her seat (1) in 1919.
 
In the same year the League of Nations was formed but ultimately collapsed due to the depredations of the fascist powers in the 1930s; it was replaced by the United Nations in October 1945.

Three years later, the UN adopted (10) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It seemed like a good idea until lawyers got hold of it.

Certain inalienable rights were not being granted in the Land of the Free. In 1865 several Confederate veterans formed (24) the Ku Klux Klan to enforce white supremacy by terrorising and killing Negroes.

You probably recall reading about the seamstress Rosa Parks refusing (1) to give up her bus seat to a white man and was arrested for violating Montgomery, Alabama’s racial segregation laws. She was charged and fined in 1955. Five days later the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed, with a young Baptist minister as its leader - Martin Luther King Jr.

Another Martin Luther was a monk and theologian who in 1517 nailed to his church door 95 theses, criticising the avarice of the Church of Rome, notably in selling indulgences which instilled fear into the people so they would pay for escape from eternal damnation. The new printing presses widely distributed Luther’s theses, heralding the beginning of the Reformation. Rome responded in 1520 with the papal bull Exsurge Domine, which warned Luther of excommunication unless he recanted. Luther’s response was to burn this papal bull (10) outside the Elster Gate of Wittenberg.

From the sublime to the ridiculous: a black bull blocked (24) the Cross Harbour Tunnel in Hong Kong for three hours in 1985. On the same day (24) in 1941 Hong Kong fell to the Japanese Imperial Army.

Fourteen days earlier in the same year (10), Japanese forces landed in the Philippines and captured Guam and sank HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, which sent shock waves through Britain.

The Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune appeared in almost 170 films, including The Seven Samurai and a strange western called Red Sun starring Charles Bronson and Ursula Andress. Mifune died (24) in 1997, aged seventy-seven.

 

Born (24) in the same year as Mifune, Evgeniya Rudneva, a Hero of the Soviet Union, flew 645 night combat missions during the Second World War, perishing on her last sortie. She’d promised her first bomb against the Nazis after they’d bombed her old university’s buildings for the faculty of mechanics and mathematics.
 
Another brave Russian was Andrei Sakharov who spoke out for civil liberties and reform in the Soviet Union. He was awarded (10) the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975, which was collected by his wife Yelena Bonner since he wasn’t allowed out of his own country.

Yet another spouse who received (10) the Peace Prize (for 1983) was Danuta, on behalf of her husband Lech Walesa, the face and voice behind the Polish Solidarity movement.

Other Peace Prize winners (10) include Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Dr Albert Schweitzer in 1953, Menachim Begin and Anwar Sadat in 1978 and Desmund Tutu in 1984.

As you’ve probably gathered by now, the Swedish Nobel Prize Ceremony official flag day is on December 10 in remembrance of the Swedish founder, Alfred Nobel, who died (10) in Italy in 1896. He invented dynamite to facilitate the building and construction industries. During his lifetime Nobel took out over 350 patents - dynamite was patented in 1867 - and all he ever wanted was to be of service to mankind. Indeed, many great engineering works would not have been possible without his invention - not least, the Suez and Panama canals.

A year after his death, it was revealed that he left the bulk of his considerable estate to a fund, the interest on which was to be awarded annually to those people whose work had been of the greatest benefit to mankind. The Nobel Foundation began on 29 June 1900 and the first Nobel Prizes were awarded (10) in 1901.

Nobel's high ideals are the reverse of those exhibited by his countrymen in 1715 when Swedish troops occupied Norway (24).

This wasn’t the only Christmas Eve invasion, of course. The Soviet invaded Afghanistan on the same day in 1979, ostensibly to support the Marxist government. It wasn’t all gloom and doom on Christmas Eve during war. In 1914 the ‘Christmas Truce’ began (24) during the First World War. In successive years it never caught on with the Top Brass as they thought the ordinary soldiers from both sides were fraternising. That would never do - bad for morale and all that.

On the same day (24) in 2003 cowardly terrorists were thwarted in their evil designs in Spain. ETA’s attempt to detonate 50kg of explosives inside Madrid’s busy Chamartin Station was defused by Spanish police. You can’t help wondering if this incident suggested (admittedly wrongly) to the authorities that the 11 March, 2004 bomb perpetrators were also ETA rather than al Queda. On such questions do political parties fall.

Independence from Spain isn’t new, naturally. In 1640 Portugal regained its independence (1) from Spain and Joao IV of Portugal became that country’s king.

And on the same day (1) seven years earlier the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain died. She and her husband Albert were patrons of such artists as Rubens and Brueghel and after her husband’s death she joined the Order of the Sisters of St Clare and became the governor of the Netherlands until her death.

 
Isabella of England was the daughter of King John. She married Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor in 1235 and he kept her hidden away. When her brother Richard passed through Sicily on his return from the Crusades he had to beg Frederick to see Isabella just to speak for a few moments. Isabella gave birth to four children, dying in childbirth with her fifth (1). Apparently, Frederick buried her beside one of his Saracen mistresses.

We started with royalty and so we’ll end with them too - with what is probably yet another surfeit of dates - calendar dates.

Friday's forgotten book

Yes, I forgot... Yesterday, I was so busy with the launch party and whatnot for Spanish Eye that there seemed no time to post the weekly FFB. Sorry about that.

Yesterday, I did receive paperback copies of books that had been hitherto forgotten, postfree courtesy of the book depository: The Venom Business, Drug of Choice and Binary all by Michael Crichton, writing as John Lange.

All eight books are now available. See my blog about all eight titles here.

Torn from the news – ‘pea nuts’

Spanish Eye contains 22 cases from Leon Cazador, half-English, half-Spanish private eye.  Its release date is today, 29 November, from Crooked Cat Publishing.

The vast majority of these cases are based on true events…  The short story ‘Fair Cop’ was first published in magazine format in 2006: here is a very brief excerpt:

Fair Cop

“Nobody beats the shell man.”

Fairs bring out the best and the worst in some people. Today was Torre del Pozo’s annual feria. Perched a kilometre from the rugged rocks and sand dunes, the village was awash with colourful ribbons, flags and banners. The main street was closed off by police barriers and lined on either side by stalls. Near the ayuntamiento and church was a fenced and straw-filled arena where livestock would be sold. As I sat at an outside café table and sipped my second cortado of the day, the air was filled with the cries of cocks, the clucking of hens and the lowing of cattle. The fireworks would come later. If my informant was correct, and he usually was, today I would catch one of the most elusive among the ungodly.

Well, I said it was brief…

From time to time news reports echo the Cazador tales, and this is but one of them, from the Costa Blanca News of August 23, 2013:

 

Often, it seems like a merry-go-round, the itinerant con men trying to keep one step of the local police, while duping the unsuspecting public. To learn how this pertains to Leon Cazador’s little outing, please read the book…

UK paperback here

UK Kindle here

Amazon com paperback here

Amazon com Kindle here

Also available on Smashwords etc

Torn from the news – ‘haul at sea’

Spanish Eye contains 22 cases from Leon Cazador, half-English, half-Spanish private eye.  Its release date is 29 November, from Crooked Cat Publishing.

The vast majority of these cases are based on true events…  The short story ‘Night Fishing’ was first published in magazine format in 2006: here is a very brief excerpt:

Night Fishing

“…hold back the encroaching night of unreason.”

Dusk fled quickly, as it does out here in the south of Spain. The warm night air was humid and still. The full moon’s reflection glinted from the calm Mediterranean. Behind me, crickets chirruped but I barely heard them as I was concentrating on the little fishing boat out at sea, with its nightlight casting a circle of white around the stern. From the cliff top, I watched the three of them through 10x50 binoculars, and my fears were confirmed. Old Salvador Molina needed his strong sons to haul the net in because it seemed to contain a heavy object. My heart sank.

Sometimes, the night of unreason lurks in dark recesses, waiting to cloak the good earth, and it would seem that even this honest fisherman was not immune to the importuning of this evil night.

Well, I said it was brief…

From time to time police reports echo the Cazador tales, and this is but one of them, from the Costa Blanca News of August 23, 2013:

Often, crime syndicates don’t float items but submerge them, and they’re then marked with an unobtrusive buoy. Of course this smuggling technique is used worldwide and isn’t specific to the coast of Spain. To learn how this pertains to Salvador Molina, you’ll have to read the book…

 

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Saints alive!

To most of us, it seems that Simon Templar, the Saint, has been around all our lives.  Which is probably quite true, since the fictional character created by Leslie Charteris debuted in 1928. He’s had quite a track record. Charteris wrote 14 novels between 1928 and 1971 (the last two co-written), 34 novellas, and 95 short stories featuring Simon Templar. Between 1963 and 1997, an additional seven novels and fourteen novellas were written by others.

My bookmarks drawn in 1964

Certain fictional prose* characters survive through the decades because their appeal touches some chord in us. For Tarzan, perhaps it’s the noble savage, for Bond, it’s his determination to overcome all obstacles, even those seemingly implacable, for Simon Templar, it’s his constant fight against ‘the ungodly’, as he terms the criminal element.

The early Saint stories reveal a different character, insouciant but deadly, compared to the later more cynical versions. But one thing they have in common is the desire to vanquish felons of all stripes.   

This Robin Hood of crime functions as an ordinary detective in some stories, while in others he out-cons vanity publishers and other rip-off artists, corrupt politicians, warmongers, greedy bosses who exploit their workers, liars and other low life.

The style of the stories is often tongue-in-cheek, knowing, and from the narrator’s point of view, not necessarily the Saint’s. Yet we don’t particularly mind Charteris demolishing the ‘fourth wall’ from time to time, because these capers are fun – and rarely without a moral, it should be added. Some writing purists might opine that this style of writing wouldn’t get published today; that kind of comment is pointless. They’re written of and for their time, and can still be enjoyed. (Indeed, Charteris toyed with rewriting the early books to bring them up to date for modern readers – 1930s transposed to the 1960s, for example – but decided, rightly, against it; the task would have been fraught with pitfalls, too.)

 

You have to be aware of alternative titles, too. For example, The Last Hero has been retitled The Creeping Death, Sudden Death, The Saint Closes the Case (current in the US), The Saint and the Last Hero. Wikipedia (naturally) has a helpful breakdown that will help avoid duplicate purchasing: here

 

In the early novels, each chapter is headed with a sentence or two explaining what will transpire, without giving away anything, such as ‘How Simon Templar sang a song, and found some of it true.’

Omniscient, humorous, Charteris teases:

Meet the Saint. His godfathers and his godmothers, at his baptism, had bestowed upon him the name of Simon Templar; but the coincidence of initials was not the only reason for the nickname by which he was far more widely known. One day, the story of how he came by that nickname may be told: it is a good story, in its way, though it goes back to the days when the Saint was nineteen, and almost as respectable as he looked. But the name had stuck… p7, The Avenging Saint (Knight Templar, 1930)

‘Put up your hands, Herr Saint.’

‘Bless my soul!’ said the Saint, who was never profane on really distressing occasions. (p120, The Avenging Saint).

‘The art of crime,’ said Simon Templar, carefully mayonaising a section of truitea la gelée, ‘is to be versatile. Repetition breeds contempt – and promotion for flat-footed oafs from Scotland Yard…’

Patricia Holm fingered the stem of her wineglass with a far-away smile. Perhaps the smile was a trifle wistful. Perhaps it wasn’t. You never know. But she had been the Saint’s partner in outlawry long enough to know what any such oratorical opening as that portended; and she smiled. – (p39, The Brighter Buccaneer, 1933)

The Saint has had many partners, though none last throughout the series. For the first half until the late 1940s, the most recurrent is Patricia Holm, his girlfriend, who was introduced in the 1928 novel in which she shows herself a capable adventurer. Holm appeared erratically throughout the series, sometimes disappearing for books at a time, and vanishing completely in the late 1940s. A pity, because up to that point many readers thought that Holm was where the heart is... Templar and Holm cohabited; one wonders if the librarians felt as affronted as they showed over Tarzan and Jane (actually, the latter pair were married, though those offended never read that book).

Capture the Saint (1997), not counting a novelization of the 1997 film, The Saint, both written by Burl Barer, was the first original Simon Templar book published since 1983. It was issued by The Saint Club, a worldwide fan club for the series which Charteris established in 1936. Capture the Saint is the 52nd Saint book published since 1928 and can now be obtained as an e-book; it faithfully captures the flavour of the early Saint adventures, in style and language.

Now, in paperback and e-book format, the Saint adventures are being re-released (Mulholland books), all with stylish covers. Some books are not available until December 2013 or early 2014; still, you could start collecting now: here   If you select the book/e-book from this website, a small donation (via Amazon associates program) goes to the Saint Club.

The Saint Club was founded by Charteris in 1936. Before the war it donated its profits to a London hospital; after the national health service was established, profits were donated to the Arbour Youth Centre in Stepney. Now, the tradition is continued, with donations going to the Red Cross and different children’s charities.

The Club acts as a focal point for anyone interested in the adventures of Simon Templar and the work of Leslie Charteris and offers merchandise and various Saint related publications. All profits are donated to charity. Annual subscription £3.50, lifetime £30. See the website here

 

* Footnote. I’m stipulating prose here. There are plenty of superhero comic-book characters who have bridged the decades and have become household names.

 

[Leon Cazador is a modern day Saint character, fighting injustice on behalf of the innocent and the weak. See him in action in Spanish Eye, on release 29 November (Paperback) here [Amazon.co.uk] (Paperback) here [Amazon.com] - Kindle links tomorrow!