THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER - Book review

Tom Clancy’s debut thriller The Hunt for Red October was published in 1984 and surprisingly I’ve just got round to reading it 41 years later! It’s obvious why it became a best-seller – the amassed technical and logistic and intelligence detail reeks of authenticity.

This review will be short, since it’s likely that most readers here have seen the film starring Sean Connery (1990). The story covers eighteen days from December 3.

Soviet Captain Ramius is taking the new ballistic missile submarine Red October to sea for an tactical and equipment validation exercise. By page 6 it is clear that Ramius intends to kill the political officer Putin. From that moment the suspense builds and does not let up.

Both the US monitoring ships and the Soviets in the exercise area lose all trace of Red October.

CIA Analyst Jack Ryan gleans information which leads him to the incredible conclusion that the Red October is sailing towards North America to defect.

So begins a chase, involving the real USS Dallas, HMS Invincible, other US vessels and a number of Soviet craft. Open conflict is a real threat – by accident or by design. Geopolitics are involved; obviously, if it is known that the Red October is being held by the Americans, the USSR will demand its return by international law, since neither was at war.

The various personalities on October and Dallas are drawn very well. The politics are sketched out by the President, the head of CIA and others believably. All in all, the 477 pages flew by.

THE HEART OF THE MATTER - Book review

Graham Greene’s novel The Heart of the Matter was published in 1948. It became an instant best-seller and has been reprinted many times and won awards and high praise.

In 1926 Greene was received into the Roman Catholic Church and, not surprisingly, several novels of his deal with characters bound by that faith. Major Scobie, the police chief of a flyblown West African colony during the Second World War, is one such.

Inspector Wilson is a new arrival: ‘He was like the lagging finger of the barometer, still pointing to Fair long after its companion has moved to Stormy’ (p11). Wilson shares accommodation with Harris and there’s an amusing episode where the pair start a cockroach hunt – The Cockroach Championship – to alleviate boredom (p70).

Scobie has been here for fifteen years and feels comfortably bound to the place. ‘Why, he wondered, swerving the car to avoid a dead pye-dog, do I love this place so much? Is it because here human nature hasn’t had time to disguise itself?’ (p35).

Unfortunately, his rather faded wife Louise wants to have a break, to go away on holiday. Scobie feels guilty that Louise is not happy. The bank won’t lend Scobie the money as his salary is not generous and, indeed, he has just been passed over for the post of Commissioner. In a moment of weakness, he accepts a loan from a local Syrian merchant, Yusef, who is a known black marketeer though no proof has ever been found. ‘He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation’ (p60).

While Louise is away in South Africa Scobie begins a clandestine affair with a refugee from a sunken transport ship, a young widow, Helen. He is aware he is committing the grave sin of adultery. He argues it is not a sin, it is love. And doomed.

There are several themes: guilt, sin, avarice, blackmail, deceit, love and trust. ‘Trust was a dead language of which he had forgotten the grammar’ (p264).

As the book blurb indicates, ‘inexorably, his conscience and his love of God lead him to disaster’.

There are too many examples of Greene’s prose imagery to note here, but the following are examples:

‘There was nothing to be read in the vacuous face, blank as a school notice-board out of term’ (p55).

These two, among many other insights in the book, suggest he drew upon his time as an Intelligence Officer in Freetown, British Sierra Leone:

‘The mosquitoes whirred steadily around them like sewing machines’ (p112). ‘... a mosquito immediately droned towards his ear. The skirring went on all the time, but when they drove to the attack they had the deeper drone of dive-bombers’ (p122).

‘Only the vultures were about – gathering round a dead chicken at the edge of the road, stooping their old men’s necks over the carrion, their wings like broken umbrellas sticking out this way and that’ (p230).

Editorial comment:

I’ve brought this up before; something that editors don’t spot: the tendency for writers to state a character thought to himself or herself. This really is tautological.  ‘He thought’ is adequate; ‘to himself/herself’ is superfluous.

‘He thought to himself, poor Louise’ (p17). Also on p53...

A PIECE OF RESISTANCE - Book review

I suspect the title of Clive Egleton’s 1970 speculative novel A Piece of Resistance is a play on words – pièce de la résistance. It concerns the Russian invasion of Britain, published ten years after Fitz Gibbon’s alternate history novel When the Kissing had to Stop. It’s a third person narrative almost entirely from the point of view of Daniel Garnett who is an escaped prisoner working under an assumed name for the Resistance. ‘Four years ago I had a wife, a small son and a house in Keynsham until a SCRAGG Missile with a ten Megaton warhead hit Bristol, and then there was no wife, no son, and no house. Maybe there are people around who can accept the Armistice, but I’m not among their number’ (p23).

The police hunt resistance members. Yet some police are informers for the Resistance. A few resistance cells resort to bank robbery to finance arms purchases. One raid goes wrong and those who get away are being hunted. The Russian authorities have taken 200 hostages as two of their soldiers were slain.

Garnett reluctantly attempts to find the culprits. He’s torn – and very probably deceived too.

There are insights into how Britain has changed.

‘We had an arsenal of terrifying weapons which we couldn’t and didn’t dare to use. But they did. Just the one, to show us that it was all over, and that’s the way our world ended, not with a whimper but with a bang’ (p81).

‘A car for every Russian made in Birmingham. They’ll have all of us walking before long. My car’s been off the road for three weeks waiting for two new tyres, and I’m supposed to have priority’ (p33).

Egleton was a leading thriller writer for forty years with inside knowledge of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence. His style is very readable and quite thrilling.

‘For a few paces his stride remained unchecked even though the blood was spurting from the hole in his throat, and then, quite suddenly, he collapsed like a rag doll’ (p47).

This is the first Garnett book in a trilogy; the others are Last Post for a Partisan and The Judas Mandate.

Clive Egleton died in 2006, aged 79. His novel Seven Days to a Killing was filmed as The Black Windmill starring Michael Caine. 

DEMIAN - Book review

 

Hermann Hesse’s first person narrative Demian was published in 1919 (although the Prologue was only added in 1960). Hesse died in 1962.

Emil Sinclair belongs to a respectable middle class family. He idolises his two sisters, mother and father – to begin with. But as he questions himself and his part in life, he is drawn to rebel. ‘... the frightened heart flees timidly back to the charmed valleys of childish virtues; unable to believe that this break too must be made, this bond also be severed’ (p116). He was encouraged in this break from his family by a school friend Kromer who then begins to bully and blackmail him. Emil is ultimately protected by an older boy, Max Demian, who becomes Emil’s mentor. In his quest to discover his self, Emil latches on to several individuals who help him on his journey of self-realisation and who have mentoring tendencies.

Instead of living his life, Emil is inclined to dwell unhealthily upon ‘self’ and ‘purpose’. As this is Hesse, there are inferences from Jung, Gnosticism, Leonardo da Vinci, and the psychological and moral growth of the main character. ‘There was only one true vocation for everybody – to find the way to himself’ (p120).

Demian is a mysterious young man. ‘I often try out an art which is known as thought-reading (p37): a technique that impels someone under scrutiny – the power of the stare – to do something unplanned, perhaps.  Demian questioned God as the supreme being: ‘it threatened the solid beliefs in me to which I felt I must cling’ (p58).

Eva is Demian’s very attractive mother, her visage haunting Emil. ‘If she could only be a mother to me, a lover, a goddess – if she could just be here! (p132).

Interesting insights. Too much me-me, perhaps; there’s a beautiful world out there that needs no psychoanalysis, just appreciation. Deep.

CONCLAVE - Book review

Robert Harris’s novel Conclave was published in 2016 and became a ‘major motion picture’ in 2024. 

I haven’t seen the film yet but certainly enjoyed the book. Harris has a writing style which draws the reader in, no matter what the subject – and, let’s be honest his subjects have been remarkably varied over many novels.

When not employing the omniscient viewpoint we get 75-year-old Cardinal Jacopo Lomeli’s. He’s the Dean of the College of Cardinals in the Vatican and is responsible for organising the upcoming conclave following the recent death of the Pope.

There are 118 cardinals allowed to vote – that is, those who are under eighty years of age.  As is the case today following the demise of Pope Francis, there is a handful of front-runners who are likely to figure in the final voting.

Besides the concerns for the imminent conclave, there were worries about the reporting of the Holy Father’s death. ‘Once, God explained all mysteries. Now He has been usurped by conspiracy theorists. They are the heretics of the age.’ (p16).

Lomeli’s ‘guilty recreation was detective fiction.’ (p40). Certainly there are mysteries for Lomeli to tackle before the final vote and the white smoke is released to announce a new Holy Father has been selected. Lomeli is feeling his age, too. ‘Once, in his youth, Lomeli had enjoyed a modest fame for the richness of his baritone. But it had become thin with age, like a fine wine left too long.’ (p115).

The cardinals are locked in during the day to cast their votes. After which they are transported to accommodation where they can eat and sleep, abiding by the injunction not to discuss the vote in the hearing of outsiders such as drivers. The food is served by nuns. ‘If anything forces this Conclave to a swift conclusion, thought Lomeli, it will be the food’ (p100).

The Sistine Chapel is taken over for the Conclave.  ‘The freshly laid carpet smelled sweet, like barley in a threshing room.’ (p32).

Lomeli does not wish to be Pope yet he appears to be a good contender. ‘Once we succumb to “the dictatorship of relativism” as it has been properly called, and attempt to survive by accommodating ourselves to every passing sect and fad of modernism, our ship is lost. We do not need a Church that will move with the world but a Church that will move the world.’ (p152).

(I always use a bookmark when reading and in this case it proved useful. At a glance I could see the tabulated vote score for a half-dozen cardinals on the page but before actually reading it I covered it up with the bookmark until reaching that point in the narrative.)

There is a poignant interlude when a nun is holding a precious photograph of a boy: ‘The creases where she had folded and refolded it over the past quarter-century had cracked the glossy surface so deeply it looked as if he were staring out from behind a latticework of bars.’ (p218).

As certain revelations surface, the voting alters and it is obvious that it will take several days to reach a ‘winner’. ‘If it drags on much longer, I wonder what the actuarial odds are that one of us will die before we find a new Pope’ (p237).

Inevitably, there is intrigue and squabbling and a few skeletons emerge from the past. The final vote does indeed come as a surprise.

Dan Brown’s thriller Angels & Demons (2000) relates some of the aspects of a conclave; however, Harris goes much further – and depicts it more accurately. On the face of it, writing a mystery/suspense novel about the selection of a pope shouldn’t be riveting, and yet it proves to be so.

If you’ve seen the film then I suspect that the surprise ending (if it’s the same!) won’t work; however, the narration itself is a pleasure and doubtless the reader can superimpose the actors on characters while reading.

Recommended.