tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24216427458802816532024-03-08T17:32:02.701+00:00WRITEALOTWRITEALOT
www.freewebs.com/nikmorton.
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Welcome to my blog. NikNik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.comBlogger1483125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-43541159984410447152024-03-08T17:31:00.001+00:002024-03-08T17:31:05.287+00:00MAYDAY - Book review<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2JOQn1Bqm5XO42ZYvmgbqFqVHz_95ZedeEyRyENelN3ua1A85qCVKp9oDDsIryqH-qmGZJ0iRB0qPw3yQLCeVQCBF_vFVOhLFgKq_89agZBjdaGFxhYaK_w5eu7P3ojsQpFKQrSICLrJQiu_RObxtjgUyivM_oqmiuwqdT0UFnDKMQ8ZKA8USbHfe3f66/s1391/MAYDAY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1391" data-original-width="819" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2JOQn1Bqm5XO42ZYvmgbqFqVHz_95ZedeEyRyENelN3ua1A85qCVKp9oDDsIryqH-qmGZJ0iRB0qPw3yQLCeVQCBF_vFVOhLFgKq_89agZBjdaGFxhYaK_w5eu7P3ojsQpFKQrSICLrJQiu_RObxtjgUyivM_oqmiuwqdT0UFnDKMQ8ZKA8USbHfe3f66/s320/MAYDAY.jpg" width="188" /></a></div><br />Nelson
DeMille and Thomas Block’s air-disaster thriller <i>Mayday</i> is a fast-paced page-turning relentless story of suspense.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
was first published in 1979, updated in 1997 and reprinted at least ten times.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Block
had assisted DeMille with aviation scenes in his debut novel <i>By the Rivers of Babylon</i> (1977). They
were old friends and, after that collaboration, they jointly decided to write a
definitive novel about the sudden decompression of a supersonic aircraft, such
as Concord, travelling effectively in subspace, and <i>Mayday</i> was the result.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
blurb says it all: ‘Twelve miles above the Pacific Ocean, a missile strikes the
Trans Flight 52, a supersonic passenger jet bound for Japan. The flight crew is
crippled or dead. Now, defying both nature and man, three survivors must
achieve the impossible. Land the plane.’</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
missile strike is a US navy test that went wrong. Fortunately, there was no
warhead. But it blasted a hole into and out of the airliner, causing the
massive decompression.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
disaster is complicated by the loss of radio contact, the arrogant naval Commander
Sloan who is desperate to cover up the incident, and the chicanery of the boss
of Trans-United Airlines. This has the potential to ruin the airline – just as
PanAm was effectively ruined by the financial fallout of the Lockerbie bombing
(1988) (it filed for bankruptcy in 1991).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">If
you’re afraid of flying, it’s probably best to give this book a miss. If you
like a high-tension edge-of-seat read, then this will satisfy.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve
deliberately avoided giving much in the way of character names and events as the
blurb suffices as a spoiler.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">DeMille
never disappoints. Block has written several aviation-oriented bestsellers.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A TV-film
was released in 2005.</span> </p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-60313990797170299472024-03-01T15:20:00.000+00:002024-03-01T15:20:30.359+00:00THE IGNORANCE OF BLOOD - Book review<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Cxp4-1WqGbvzhseTE5GxcCYSbBMgMFExkgcPUb6DShXT2Y30JoWBrhdLwC5su2ERh3H9_bO_5EBB2kVoUuFQBHN4HR7wcNWjFSxe1Q6l93mAxCGDunBkia8-A8RjabWirRp8Pjavqse4DQTJzl9FVaj2uQcOvA4Oq5rYjdH7aEPv_HSoDE6iR8ziNajK/s1544/IGNORANCE%20OF%20BLOOD.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1544" data-original-width="998" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Cxp4-1WqGbvzhseTE5GxcCYSbBMgMFExkgcPUb6DShXT2Y30JoWBrhdLwC5su2ERh3H9_bO_5EBB2kVoUuFQBHN4HR7wcNWjFSxe1Q6l93mAxCGDunBkia8-A8RjabWirRp8Pjavqse4DQTJzl9FVaj2uQcOvA4Oq5rYjdH7aEPv_HSoDE6iR8ziNajK/s320/IGNORANCE%20OF%20BLOOD.jpg" width="207" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
is the fourth – and final – book in Robert Wilson’s Inspector Jefe Javier
Falcón detective series set primarily in Seville. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ignorance of Blood</i> was published in 2009.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
takes place in 2006 when a Russian mafia man is involved in a fatal traffic
accident. In his car the police find a bag bulging with euros and video discs –
stolen from a mafia gang, apparently.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Falcón
is still trying to get to the bottom of a bomb explosion – was it terrorists or
some other cause?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is advised not to
obsess about it. There are other cases to investigate: ‘Personal crusades,
Javier, are not advisable in police work. Every old people’s home in Spain
probably has a retired detective gaping from the windows, his mind still
twisted around a missing girl, or a poor bludgeoned boy. Don’t go there. Nobody
expects it of you’ (p41).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Russian villains are particularly unpleasant – and seem to be competing gangs.
‘The veneer, though, was only an expensive suit thick, as Viktor Belenki was a
violent brute with access to a rage so incandescent that even Revnik’s most
psychopathic henchmen were afraid of him’ (p45).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
video discs implicate a number of very important individuals in the city and
elsewhere; there are connections to shady constructors and financiers. Two
mafia gangs want those discs.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Falcón
covers a lot of familiar ground, including Atocha rail station, where three
bombs were exploded on March 11, 2004; other bombs exploded on four trains;
those responsible were members of al-Qaeda; over 190 people were killed and
over 2,000 injured. (I recall it well; we were living in Spain at the time).
However, the bomb explosion Falcón is investigating is not believed to be
connected to that atrocity.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Still
topical now, Falcón is faced with individuals being radicalised by Islamists.
‘Radical Islam was not something you changed your mind about. Once admitted to
the close fraternity and their secrets there was no walking away. They wouldn’t
let you’ (p81). Indeed, anyone joining becomes a ‘lost soul, walking a world of
death, destruction and martyrdom’ (p86).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Falcón
is drawn into the turf war between Russian factions when Dario, the son of Consuelo,
his lover, is kidnapped. Are the kidnappers Russian or Islamists?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Along
the way, he is faced with an imprisoned judge, a female sculptor in a bikini, and
a Moroccan friend engaged in spying on an Islamist group for the Spanish
security service. There are violent deaths, gruesome deaths, and a convoluted
mystery that must be solved in Morocco.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Falcón
has previously suffered from a breakdown, but now he is stressed and stretched
to the point where not only is his job at risk, but also his life. Some
chapters end with a nail-biting cliff-hanger.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
descriptions of Seville, the characters and the emotions are well delineated
with powerful writing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Although
there are references to previous Falcón novels, the book can be read as a
standalone. However, the Falcón books in order are: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Hidden Assassins, The Blind Man of Seville, The Silent and the
Damned</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ignorance of Blood.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-33745280806928351212024-02-29T16:52:00.000+00:002024-02-29T16:52:01.871+00:00ABANDONATI - Book review<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoP37uyo3refMy655YdkCnrvrWuAcB-N6DZFKz6vsXPUxJIWVBrot5ZUQEIK0AkVmrLIq0GJs0spcpVgvm8MccA3-NmxuBRqPXJapha8MA24SpKo1c1FnbjbgSMAmARMSnsRf40UvtLjV4SK2beTX9YqFCYFkRQrw0IJFANe5ybBQhpzWEf0xlnQ0ejqhw/s1391/ABANDONATI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1391" data-original-width="845" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoP37uyo3refMy655YdkCnrvrWuAcB-N6DZFKz6vsXPUxJIWVBrot5ZUQEIK0AkVmrLIq0GJs0spcpVgvm8MccA3-NmxuBRqPXJapha8MA24SpKo1c1FnbjbgSMAmARMSnsRf40UvtLjV4SK2beTX9YqFCYFkRQrw0IJFANe5ybBQhpzWEf0xlnQ0ejqhw/s320/ABANDONATI.jpg" width="194" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Garry
Kilworth’s 1988 dystopian novel <i>Abandonati
</i>is a slim volume but it packs a powerful punch.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
<i>abandonati</i> are the street people,
homeless or mentally ill, with no place to go – the abandoned ones, unwanted
castaways from our society.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
blurb inside describes it as a funny and moving fable. And it is that.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Some
unspecified apocalypse has left groups of people, mostly dazed and without
purpose, save scavenging for food – and hopefully, booze – in a deserted and
seriously damaged vast city.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Guppy
is one of the scavengers and he is not particularly bright – he didn’t even
know he was named after a fish – and he is an alcoholic. ‘You just forgot
things. You been boozin’ so long it’s made your brain soft. That don’t mean
you’re stupid, do it? Stupid is when you pretend to know everything, and
don’t...’ (p32)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He
soon encounters a little but cocky guy called Rupert and a big yet docile black
fellow Trader.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rupert
is convinced that the rich people have escaped to another planet, leaving the
‘dregs’ behind. He is determined to construct a space ship to follow them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
are two short italicised sequences. One shows two spacemen landing on a planet
with breathable air. They walk on purple springy grass – which is spooky for
me, as many years ago when our daughter was small I made up a bedtime story
about a boy called Jack who had many adventures, among them walking on purple
springy grass! The other sequence again features two men, army officers in a
bunker, who appear to be still fighting a war... I’m not sure whether these
inserts explain the apocalypse, or are flashback vignettes; to my mind they
seemed out-of-place, interrupting the flow of the trio’s journey. A minor
quibble.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Before
long, the reader is wrapped up with trio’s quest through the devastated city,
confronting violent gangs and also a friendly bunch of folk who have found a
secret cache of wine in the crypt of a church. Another group they meet are
travellers – and one of their women takes a shine to Guppy with amusing consequences.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">All
three are endearing in their own way.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rupert
has a tendency to swear – not a lot – but it is remarked upon by the gentle
giant Trader: ‘You do too much swearing. It doesn’t mean anything if you do too
much’ (p67) – which is so true!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">However,
Guppy is the core of the book, which, among other things, is about humanity
surviving despite adversity. ‘Guppy was illiterate, but he could read people
like books’ (p106). ‘Guppy couldn’t hold something in his mind for very long.
Other thoughts kept coming in, day by day, and evicting the current owners.
Guppy’s mind was not inhospitable to thoughts, but there was limited space and
only one or two could remain in residence at any set time’ (p130). ‘You can’t
help loving someone who makes you think you’re special’ (p131).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There
are instances of gentle humour, distress, and even a poignant death – but Guppy
manages to swim through it all. This is a very moving book whose characters
tend to live on after the last page. Indeed, they are not abandoned.</span> </p><p>PS - The cover features artwork by Dave McKean. He came to prominence with covers for DC comics. My failing, but his artwork - and this cover - do not appeal to me.</p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-5018368525950632132024-02-15T17:08:00.004+00:002024-02-15T17:08:49.615+00:00THE ENGLISH LADY - book review<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdedK7HKkL-XMOWgVthdpqdzzvHi6RGY8kzrmy2AuAyp2F5xd4AMMGN1bNJJS2j0zzgtCegeQqwPdddTlxX5uBxkIpPQXTF0gKYLERXjOk2HeczUkMMgeYjTnNfsAbskYnVdFcQWNlqiOt12jqSXA1cGzhhWJhjvyOl-C4VzxFEkHRWSzWXC-AAvwxEjZS/s1387/ENGLISH%20LADY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1387" data-original-width="825" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdedK7HKkL-XMOWgVthdpqdzzvHi6RGY8kzrmy2AuAyp2F5xd4AMMGN1bNJJS2j0zzgtCegeQqwPdddTlxX5uBxkIpPQXTF0gKYLERXjOk2HeczUkMMgeYjTnNfsAbskYnVdFcQWNlqiOt12jqSXA1cGzhhWJhjvyOl-C4VzxFEkHRWSzWXC-AAvwxEjZS/s320/ENGLISH%20LADY.jpg" width="190" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p>William
Harrington’s Second World War espionage novel </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The English Lady</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> was published in 1982. It comprises three parts:
1931-1934; 1938-1940; and 1941-1942 (though the final pages are 1981).</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lady
Nancy Brookeford has grown up knowing the rich and famous movers and shakers of
Great Britain and the United States, including the Prince of Wales, Winston
Churchill and President Roosevelt! ‘Her face was faultless, clear, smooth skin;
a small nose, a small mouth with full mobile lips; large, deep-blue eyes;
straight, unplucked brows... She had a reputation for being pretty and
intelligent’ (p5). The family had relations in Germany, one of whom was Helmut
Bittrich, a cousin, who taught her to fly when she visited that country.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Her
skill as a pilot combined with her looks gained the attention of Germans, especially
Nazis, not least Von Ribbentrop and Hindenburg, and in the early 1930s Göring
and Goebbels. By 1934 she found herself being employed as a pilot for
Lufthansa. Before long she was brought to the notice of Hitler, who seemed
enraptured by her...</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">However,
Hitler was not the only one under her spell: Reinhard Heydrich was intensely
interested in her: ‘He was a sensual man – his narrow eyes wandered over her
like exploring fingertips... He liked to fly, to fence, to play the violin, and
to make love to beautiful women. This was the positive side of his personality.
He showed a dark negative in the performance of his official duties, she
supposed. Maybe she need not see that side’ (p132).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
then, when returning to England for a funeral, she is faced with a proposition
she cannot refuse: to become a spy because war was imminent.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Haydrich
observed ‘We have to prepare for war. To save the peace, you prepare for war’
(p183).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
phrase handed down from the fourth century Romans, perhaps<i>: si vis pacem, para bellum</i>. Interestingly, part of this was used
as a motto by a German arms maker – parabellum guns and cartridges.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
is plenty of intrigue among the Nazi hierarchy, several of them intent on
ridding the country of Hitler and then suing for peace – among these was
Admiral Canaris. Nancy is often in the thick of it, all the while getting
closer to Heydrich.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Two
aspects of the novel create suspense and verisimilitude. The detailed
behind-the-scenes behaviour of the Nazi hierarchy and the quite exhilarating
flying sequences.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Certain
events are touched upon, notably </span><i><span lang="DE" style="background: white; color: #202122; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: DE; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Kristallnacht</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #202122; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> – the Night of Broken Glass, and Hitler’s detestation of
the Soviets. Both monsters, Hitler and Heydrich, are given human faces, no mean
feat, though I doubt that this will endear some readers to the book.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Any
student of the Second World War will be aware where the book is leading when
Heydrich is transferred to Czechoslovakia. While Nancy frequently uses the
airfield at Lidice, the book does not mention this town’s awful fate.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">William
Harrington was a lawyer turned prolific novelist, writing a half-dozen Columbo books
and over 17 standalone novels. He died in 2000, having committed suicide aged 68.</span> </p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-39548453814882025532024-02-14T17:29:00.001+00:002024-02-14T17:29:00.227+00:00EXOCET - Book review<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ7OBtWUcUfa9CF7vIgWYEL_nker_EKhrzsi1Dbp4K3Oe6vnHeVphsFtG-l0dfjHmlOTRpASfYtxitlw5bzp93hxpcUrAFIN3twgCOYmMTF9jbMCl8ScrSEvc-5LXVH6_Wm74Y-vn16Nkko3HNDXrdqMv3han2rOOd2R-YEZmX0u_wI8qJCl2Xpvyji8d_/s1540/EXOCET.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1540" data-original-width="986" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ7OBtWUcUfa9CF7vIgWYEL_nker_EKhrzsi1Dbp4K3Oe6vnHeVphsFtG-l0dfjHmlOTRpASfYtxitlw5bzp93hxpcUrAFIN3twgCOYmMTF9jbMCl8ScrSEvc-5LXVH6_Wm74Y-vn16Nkko3HNDXrdqMv3han2rOOd2R-YEZmX0u_wI8qJCl2Xpvyji8d_/s320/EXOCET.jpg" width="205" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Jack
Higgins’s 1983 thriller <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Exocet </i>was
fresh off the press roughly a year after the Falklands War and presciently
deals with Argentina’s search for additional Exocet missiles, as at the outset
of hostilities Argentina only possessed very few.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Brigadier
Charles Ferguson is head of an adjunct to the British Secret Intelligence
Service, Group Four, directly responsible to the PM. Ferguson’s top man is Major
Tony Villiers in the Grenadier Guards, attached to the SAS.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Villiers
is divorced; his wife was Gabrielle Legrand. They used to work together
undercover. She is tasked by Ferguson with getting to know Colonel Raul Carlos
Montera, Special Air Attaché at the Argentinian Embassy in London. She must
find out what the Argentine intentions were regarding the Falkland Islands.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Galtieri
and Dozo figure in the story, as you’d expect.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Businessman
Felix Donner is successful – and an illegal arms dealer. He has links with
Russia. And he is hired by the Argentinians to obtain a ship-load of Exocets,
weapons that could win the war. As the weapons are manufactured in France, that
seems a likely place to make a deal...</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Villiers
is pulled out of the Falklands – he’s part of a four-man reconnaissance team
and sent to France to thwart Donner.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
story is non-stop, switching scenes and countries at a fair lick, and never
lets up, in the usual Higgins manner. The relationship between the pilot Raul
and Gabrielle is handled well and creates tension. Of course history tells us
that the additional Exocets were never obtained.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
manipulative General Ferguson appears in other books by Higgins. Interestingly,
in Port Stanley, FI, there’s a Villiers Street. Having recently read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Falklands War</i> by the Sunday Times
Insight Team (1982), it is quite evident that Higgins read this account for
background verisimilitude, and uses the facts convincingly.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Editorial note:<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Higgins
mentions a Smith and Wesson Magnum revolver with a Carswell silencer (p3). I could
be wrong, but I thought it was very rare for a revolver to have a silencer
fitted. A Magnum pistol, fine.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">His
character Dillon’s favourite handgun is a Walther PPK with Carswell silencer...<o:p></o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-18026960921182862722024-02-13T17:17:00.000+00:002024-02-13T17:17:07.213+00:00THE FALKLANDS WAR - THE FULL STORY<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlq4lQyWm07dU3heiIq1zTN-p-m5A1WQiVeYKKb0z8XNawNJOvsqA8ndZCFmjkrqJ8rlRQ7LB-9AGx4CpviEz0q8E6MP9XSBAcz4AQJz2KS4_3TNL4EU6eTRtr6aeVcA8LTVgIwF4zbIqwSJ0hae0sevK4Be0QpXIc1XUDXZTD4HdlIlzQEUuBNdZvv8Xv/s1552/FALKLANDS%20WAR-INSIGHT%20TEAM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1552" data-original-width="962" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlq4lQyWm07dU3heiIq1zTN-p-m5A1WQiVeYKKb0z8XNawNJOvsqA8ndZCFmjkrqJ8rlRQ7LB-9AGx4CpviEz0q8E6MP9XSBAcz4AQJz2KS4_3TNL4EU6eTRtr6aeVcA8LTVgIwF4zbIqwSJ0hae0sevK4Be0QpXIc1XUDXZTD4HdlIlzQEUuBNdZvv8Xv/s320/FALKLANDS%20WAR-INSIGHT%20TEAM.jpg" width="198" /></a></div><br /><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The
Sunday Times Insight Team produced this paperback in 1982, not long after the
end of the war, which was quite an achievement. The writing team consisted of
Paul Eddy, Magnus Linklater and Peter Gillman, though they were assisted
several reporters and researchers; participants from both sides of the conflict
were interviewed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The
book contains black-and-white photographs, diagrams and maps.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">On
the night of April 1, 1982 the first Argentine troops landed – variously called
the Amphibious Commando Company or </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">the
Buzo Tactico</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> - two distinct military groups; depends on whose report is
true. According to this book the Argentines attacked Moody Brook barracks with
indiscriminate bursts of automatic fire, using phosphorus grenades and riddling
each room with bullets. Fortunately, the barracks had already been abandoned by
the Royal Marines. ‘The Argentine government made much of the claim that its
troops had gone to great lengths to ensure that the invasion was bloodless.
That was largely the result but what happened at Moody Brook suggests it was
not the intention’ (p15).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">According
to an Argentine officer, they only used tear gas and intended to take prisoners,
and only fired their weapons to alert other troops converging on Government
House. (</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The Argentine Fight for the
Falklands</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> by Martin Middlebrook (1989)).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mid-morning
on April 2 the Union flag was lowered, to be replaced by the blue and white
flag of Argentina.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Chapter
2 covers some of the diplomatic events taking place at the UN building in
February. Talks had been going on for about five years or more, with no headway
being made. Talk was that if negotiations got nowhere there would be an
invasion in July. Also ongoing was a dispute between Argentina and Chile
regarding the Beagle Channel.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Chapter
3 relates the history of the Falkland Islands and the assorted occupiers, going
back to the 1500s. In 1690 English Captain Strong stepped ashore and named the
islands after Lord Falkland, the commissioner of the admiralty. Frenchmen came
in his wake... The poet Byron’s grandfather<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>sailed into a bay off West Falkland in 1765 and established Port Egmont.
As it happened the French had set up a settlement on East Falkland in 1764,
Port Louis. In 1767 the French sold Port Louis to Spain for £250,000. ‘Spain formally
restored Port Egmont to the British – on September 16, 1771’ (p38).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
1816 the United Provinces of the River Plate split from Spain and Argentina was
born. In 1820 an Argentinian frigate took formal possession of the islands.
Some argy-bargy ensued over the years, including the razing of Port Louis by
the American corvette <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lexington</i>, and the
establishment of a penal colony whose prisoners promptly murdered the colony’s
new governor. At that point the British sloop <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clio</i> hove into sight and was mostly welcomed by the Port Louis
settlers. The British raised their flag on January 2, 1833 and stayed.
Argentina protested for almost 150 years thereafter, ultimately appealing to
the UN whose resolution 1514 of 1960 ‘pledged to bring an end everywhere
colonialism in all its forms’ (p41). The UN’s 1965 resolution pressed Britain
and Argentina ‘to find a quick and peaceful solution to the problem, bearing in
mind the UN charter and the interests of the population of the said islands’
(p41).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
January 1982 scrap merchant Constantino Sergio Davidoff visited the British
embassy in Buenos Aires to report his intentions: the scrap metal merchant had
a contract to dismantle South Georgia’s four old whaling stations (which were
closed in the early 1960s); they belonged to the Christian Salvesen shipping
firm in Edinburgh. The Argentinians saw an opportunity to bring forward their
intended invasion, using the scrap metal issue as both an excuse and a cover.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">On
March 19 four British Antarctic Survey scientists were on a field trip to Leith
from their base in Grytviken (comprising about 30 BAS people).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They spotted the Argentinian naval fleet
auxiliary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bahia Buen Suceso</i> anchored
in the harbour. Onboard were a contingent of marines, arms, ammunition, radio
equipment, field surgical kit and food supplies. The troops were led by a slim,
boyish-looking man whose shock of fair hair earned him the nickname ‘el Rubio’:
Captain Alfredo Astiz. (p68). Astiz was a particularly nasty character,
responsible for torture and death. He landed about 50 men, some in paramilitary
uniform, and raised the Argentinian flag. The BAS scientists reported this to the
governor at Stanley.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">On
March 20 HMS <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Endurance</i>, with a
contingent of Royal Marines was directed from Stanley to South Georgia and
authorised to use force if necessary. Three days later <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Endurance</i> was redirected to Grytviken; however, two marines were
landed surreptitiously to an observation post on a bluff overlooking Leith
harbour and, on March 25, they noted the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bahia
Paraiso</i> arrive and disembark many troops and their equipment. They reported
by radio to London via a satellite link; but it was kept a closely guarded
secret – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">why?</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">MI6
had a base in Buenos Aires. ‘Every Wednesday a meeting is held after lunch
time, attended by, among others, the naval and military attachés at the British
embassy’ (p78). On March 24 their assessment was that something was up – naval exercises
with the Uruguayan navy were not plausible, judging by first-hand intelligence
from the naval bases. Their opposite numbers in the American embassy concluded
that an invasion was due on April 1.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
machinations in the UN make for interesting reading as certain countries take
sides. ‘Guyana, worried about the claims on her territory made by neighbouring Venezuela,
was on the British side’ (p114). [And this situation is still contentious today!]
Interestingly, the Russians abstained – the issue did not affect their
interests. America sat on the fence initially, for Argentina supported the
fight against Communism that was spreading in Latin America: ‘We’re friends on
both sides,’ Reagan announced. (p115). Ultimately, the British ambassador Sir Nicholas
Henderson, with the help of General Haig, brought the Americans on-side. ‘On April
30... America would be allying herself publicly with the UK. “Armed aggression
of that kind must not be allowed to succeed” said the president’ (p137).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Chapter
12 – ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ – relates the travails and recovery of South Georgia
and the surrender of the Argentinians based there.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
recapture of Port Stanley signalled the end of the conflict with the surrender
of the Argentine forces on June 14.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
are chapters and sections on the air-battles and aircraft, the terrible loss of life, the
sinkings, and the bravery on both sides. As a piece of ‘instant reportage’ it
is an impressive book. Granted, after all this time, as many more facts (and
books) have surfaced some of this account will have been expanded upon and even
corrected. Still, it’s a worthwhile read for an overview of the conflict.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
concludes: ‘At least the war has guaranteed one thing for the Falklanders on
their remote rocks in the South Atlantic. No one will ever again underestimate
the dangers they face’ (p265). [Famous last words?]<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-24200500115116866282024-01-22T14:51:00.000+00:002024-01-22T14:51:14.613+00:00DEADLY GAME - Book review<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO1cwjhY6tHhG4RuiZwDNwHa8FpX_BsV1PYHxx9JS8xUe3aMT9ZUFVDOZ00BxVNhr7ZVyur2BLNqEqw-aUShQPqsMm9bNyqUY9o9exlMG8oqFibDV9Utocz4MLAoU67AKeBCpWM2HzxVCd-icWbzTn48fBeWON1dlHcDReoKKSmG5VfsGNk0bfgYe4XUzD/s1894/DEADLY%20GAME.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1894" data-original-width="1218" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO1cwjhY6tHhG4RuiZwDNwHa8FpX_BsV1PYHxx9JS8xUe3aMT9ZUFVDOZ00BxVNhr7ZVyur2BLNqEqw-aUShQPqsMm9bNyqUY9o9exlMG8oqFibDV9Utocz4MLAoU67AKeBCpWM2HzxVCd-icWbzTn48fBeWON1dlHcDReoKKSmG5VfsGNk0bfgYe4XUzD/s320/DEADLY%20GAME.jpg" width="206" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Michael
Caine’s debut novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Deadly Game</i> (2023)
is a good solid thriller.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">DCI
Harry Turner is a tough nut who doesn’t suffer fools at all, let alone gladly. ‘Harry
hated the phrase “old-school copper” – especially when applied to him, as it
often was round the Met. Yes, he liked to get the job done. Yes, he could throw
a punch as well as take one. And no, he didn’t think police officers were social
workers or local politicians. Their job was law enforcement: pure and simple. Not
therapy’ (p26). He was ex-Army, ex-SAS and served in Helmand, Columbia, Georgia
and Myanmar – until a sports knee injury got him – ‘It was a tackle that got
me, not the Taliban’ (p28). After that, he joined the Met.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Harry
joined an elite team in department SO22, headed up by DCS Robinson – a team
created because the ‘Met had lost its balls, lost its focus and was too busy
covering its arse to make the calls that get proper bad guys behind bars’ (p34).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then,
one day, on Harry’s doorstep, so to speak, a metal box of radioactive material
is found at a dump in Stepney, East London. Unfortunately, before the police
can arrive, it goes missing. Harry and his team (DI John Williams, Inspector Carol
Walker, and Sergeant Iris Davies) are tasked with finding the missing uranium
before it gets into the wrong hands.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
seems that an unsavoury criminal gang is involved, and far-right skinheads, and
also an aristocratic art Dealer, Julian Smythe and oligarch Vladimir Voldrev;
these latter two are quite creepy, each confronted in their own personal
fiefdom/lair.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Throughout,
whenever Harry is speaking – or thinking – I tend to hear Michael Caine’s
voice; the writing and characterisation is that consistent. ‘I think it’s time
to prick this prick’s bubble... I don’t believe in ghosts myself. Personally, I
believe in crooks and the way they terrorise people. It’s not magic. It’s the
oldest trick in history, and it’s always the poorest that get ripped off most’ (p145).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
are deaths along the way, and a shocking explosion, as the team seems to be
getting close to their goal. The pace rarely lets up, the pages keep turning,
and the denouement contains a neat twist.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps the swearing could have been reduced by a third - most is apt, in character, but sometimes it seems gratuitous.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’d
be happy to make the acquaintance of Harry Turner again.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-38956989344364792742024-01-20T15:32:00.001+00:002024-01-20T15:32:00.138+00:00PRISONER WITHOUT A NAME, CELL WITHOUT A NUMBER - Book review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv8oclx6F8Nxnlh9Tjqy96mTYOS0PQqkRfwgLQ_Fak7uVOyFlVsHLauptZud17J2RU7mTYU1iUkcafqC72vdIHlNwbbkLAF7AZp7p77p6oYLVhFeMVAylo0RIhCim8PikVgH32YrH3mBszLBfnOKYNB-R52u852b3lFV-pwKtmQ8CsXnqrw9Y8i1FDl1ug/s1419/PRISONER%20WITHOUT%20NAME.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1419" data-original-width="852" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv8oclx6F8Nxnlh9Tjqy96mTYOS0PQqkRfwgLQ_Fak7uVOyFlVsHLauptZud17J2RU7mTYU1iUkcafqC72vdIHlNwbbkLAF7AZp7p77p6oYLVhFeMVAylo0RIhCim8PikVgH32YrH3mBszLBfnOKYNB-R52u852b3lFV-pwKtmQ8CsXnqrw9Y8i1FDl1ug/s320/PRISONER%20WITHOUT%20NAME.jpg" width="192" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Jacobo
Timerman’s autobiographical book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prisoner
without a name, Cell without a Number</i> was published in 1980, its English
translation released in 1981.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Timerman
was the editor of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Opinión, </i>Argentina’s
leading liberal newspaper<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. </i>The paper
was not popular with the military government because he was not averse to
castigate both the Left and the Right for human rights abuses. Inevitably, it
came to a head one dawn in ‘April 1977 some twenty civilians besieged my
apartment in midtown Buenos Aires. They said they were obeying orders from the
Tenth Infantry Brigade of the First Army Corps’ (p9). He was covered with a
blanket and bundled in a car and taken away. Eventually, blindfolded and
handcuffed, he discovered he was kidnapped ‘by the extremist sector of the
army’ (p29) ...which was at the heart of Nazi operations in Argentina...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In effect, they mistakenly believed he was
part of a Jewish anti-Argentine conspiracy!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He
was held for two and a half years – tortured, abused and humiliated – without
charges ever being brought against him.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
was probably because he was internationally known and his wife continued to
raise awareness of his plight that he was not murdered – or ‘disappeared’.
Certainly, he believed that his only crime was to be born Jewish.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘Entire
families disappeared. The bodies were covered in cement and thrown to the
bottom of the Plata or Paraná rivers. Sometimes the cement was badly applied
and corpses were washed up along the coasts of Argentina and Uruguay... (others
were) thrown into old cemeteries under existing graves... (and some) heaved
into the middle of the ocean from helicopters... (while others were)
dismembered and burned... Small children were turned over to grandparents or
more commonly presented to childless couples in Chile, Paraguay, and Brazil
...’ (p50/51).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then
in late 1979, his citizenship of Argentina was revoked and he was expelled from
the country, and then resided in Israel.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; color: #202122; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Timerman was born in </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Bar,
Ukraine<span style="color: #202122;">, to Jewish parents. To escape the Russian
</span>persecution<span style="color: #202122;"> of Jews and </span>pogroms<span style="color: #202122;"> there, the family emigrated to Argentina in 1928,
when he was five years old.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
is a searing account of a brave man. He died in November, 1999, aged 76.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-78490826474677423272024-01-19T15:32:00.000+00:002024-01-19T15:32:07.819+00:00A PROPER MARRIAGE - Book review<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHBQZqlVR7sHL5uijRatCVRv7n96TSt0IMadfoDMU5lyMMn0yCj4SvgHi6QhMCUs1I1bV4bUNU2scQltpl7pOmDRBUtwlVwEXHcu8YlQB3TVsrUk9OAPlzRejoUf2dtwoPs4JmmO0b1Be4D-UQUPieCd57BH4L1Wr5kWBN_3jgyigWuGtUrhWGptbyPFAi/s1371/A%20PROPER%20MARRIAGE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1371" data-original-width="856" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHBQZqlVR7sHL5uijRatCVRv7n96TSt0IMadfoDMU5lyMMn0yCj4SvgHi6QhMCUs1I1bV4bUNU2scQltpl7pOmDRBUtwlVwEXHcu8YlQB3TVsrUk9OAPlzRejoUf2dtwoPs4JmmO0b1Be4D-UQUPieCd57BH4L1Wr5kWBN_3jgyigWuGtUrhWGptbyPFAi/s320/A%20PROPER%20MARRIAGE.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Doris
Lessing’s second book in her semi-biographical ‘Children of Violence’ series, </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A Proper Marriage</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> (1954) is her sequel
to </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Martha Quest</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> (1952). Certain
observations made below are not spoilers – they are mentioned briefly in the
book blurb.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
point-of-view is omniscient, so we get inside the heads of several characters,
often in the same scene. The story is set in the fictional African country of Zambesia
(not a million miles away from Southern Rhodesia where Lessing lived most of
her formative years (1925-1949)): ‘The small colonial town was at a crossroads
in its growth: half a modern city, half a pioneers’ achievement; a large block
of flats might stand next to a shanty of wood and corrugated iron, and most
streets petered out suddenly in a waste of scrub and grass’ (p10).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Martha
is now nineteen and married to a clerk, Douglas Knowell. She is strong-willed, restless
and not particularly enamoured of boring married life – though at the beginning
of the book she has only been married five days... ‘Until two weeks ago, her
body had been free and her own, something to be taken for granted...’ (p37).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
the start of the Second World War, though at the outset this does not seem to
affect the township. The townsfolk are conscious that there is a ‘big issue’
with the black population, however: ‘any expression of a desire for improvement
on the part of the natives was immediately described as impertinence, or
sedition, or even worse’ (p62). The parson’s wife observes: ‘If they learn to
use arms, they can use them on us... this business of sending black troops
overseas is extremely short-sighted. They are treated as equals in Britain,
even by the women’ (p66).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">When
Douglas and his pals sign up to fight, Martha is taken aback; she is not enough
for him, he prefers to ‘rush off to war’... (Douglas) ‘had not known how
intolerably boring and empty his life was until there was a chance of escaping
from it’ (p80).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">When
Martha learns that she is pregnant and the illegality of an abortion crops up,
she ‘flew into an angry tirade against governments who presumed to tell women
what they should do with their own bodies; it was the final insult to personal
liberty’ (p106).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Throughout
the book there are fine examples of Lessing’s eye for description: ‘The
jacaranda were holding up jaded yellow arms. This drying, yellowing, fading
month, this time when the year tensed and tightened towards the coming rains,
always gave her a feeling of perverted autumn, and now filled her with an
exquisite cold apprehension. The sky, above the haze of dust, was a glitter of
hot blue light’ (p113). Another brief example: ‘Soon the wings of her joy had
folded’ (p124). ‘Martha drifted to the divan, where she sat, with listening
hands, so extraordinarily compelling was the presence of the stranger in her
flesh’ (p129).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
actual scenes running up to and encompassing the birth are very well done. ‘Every
particle of her flesh shrieked out, while the wave spurted like an electric
current from somewhere in her backbone and went through her in shock after
shock...’ (pp163-167). [Lessing gave birth to her first child in 1940].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">One
observation is certainly no longer true in the age of social media: ‘... one of
the minor pleasures of power is to exchange in private views which would ruin
you if your followers ever had a suspicion you held them’ (p188)! Also relevant,
perhaps: ‘Unfortunately nine-tenths of the time of any political leader must be
spent not on defeating his opponents, but on manipulating the stupidities of
his own side’ (p365).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Martha
gets involved with a group expounding Communism which appeals to her
disenchantment with the rich crowd she has been with; and while Douglas is away
training, she also flirts with RAF pilots stationed nearby. This is a depiction
of a disintegration of a marriage – a marriage perhaps she should never have
embarked upon.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
is very little feeling that there is a war ‘in the north’. No wounded, limbless
survivors of conflict appear; food and material shortages are not evident.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Martha
will appear next in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Ripple in the Storm</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-81517271419226756332023-12-26T16:21:00.001+00:002023-12-26T16:21:16.040+00:00MALTA: BLITZED BUT NOT BEATEN<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAsu8jH1UHG_JPUoAG74N8LHJ6jQEFyGRyLQfZNFnKq6axcq4Qm8woVoqO43S30Wp6xMrOM0XbJ91u1ncQdli8SehIaH1KsuLUna8kc0IUF0Qgtc3wBYmpJ5U-u9f5inLlfH0N_pDbbW3Hrcj5NkJ5T4e4x4lsQI8XWuN2lZVYLSeW9nY4YLHM6HVmmUJZ/s2071/MALTA%20BLITZED.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2071" data-original-width="1560" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAsu8jH1UHG_JPUoAG74N8LHJ6jQEFyGRyLQfZNFnKq6axcq4Qm8woVoqO43S30Wp6xMrOM0XbJ91u1ncQdli8SehIaH1KsuLUna8kc0IUF0Qgtc3wBYmpJ5U-u9f5inLlfH0N_pDbbW3Hrcj5NkJ5T4e4x4lsQI8XWuN2lZVYLSeW9nY4YLHM6HVmmUJZ/s320/MALTA%20BLITZED.jpg" width="241" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Philip
Vella’s comprehensive account of the Second World War siege of Malta was
published in 1985; my copy was the third edition, 1989. In the 1970s a group of
Maltese enthusiasts formed The National War Museum Association and over the
years they have collected and collated documents, photographs, first-hand
reports, interviews and eye-witness testimonies about the Battle for Malta.
This large-format book is a result of those endeavours.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Besides
relating in detail from the outset of hostilities, it also contains almost a
hundred pages of appendices recording convoys, daily rations, buildings
destroyed or damaged, honours and awards. There are also dozens of
illustrations, maps and black-and-white photographs. It is a treasure-trove for
any writer or student of history.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
the summer of 1939, when it seemed that war was imminent, the Admiralty pressed
to strengthen the island against air attack by installing 122 heavy AA guns, 60
light AA guns and 24 searchlights. Inertia hampered this process. On June 10,
1940 Mussolini declared war on Britain and France. Malta was in the firing line
and by this time the islands only had 34 heavy anti-aircraft guns and 8 Bofors;
the number of searchlights was up to strength, however.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘...
Malta’s loss would have denied the Allies of a staging post to the Middle East,
jeopardised the fate of the British Army fighting in North Africa, and turned
the Mediterranean into an Axis lake’ (p163).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
air-raid sirens sounded to warn of the first raid on June 11, 1940. ‘... ten
Savoia Marchetti 79s crossed the 60 mile channel on their way to their target Hal
Far airfield’ (p6). Other targets were the dockyard and forts. There were seven
bombing sorties that first day, with no planes lost on either side.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">That
year, Malta suffered 211 air raids. Succeeding years increased in number, 963
and 2,031 for 1941 and 1942 respectively. The devastation was horrendous (as
many photographs attest); ‘the Royal Opera House was demolished along with
several other buildings in Valletta on April 7, 1942’ (p111); the ruins of the
opera house are still there, concrete yet mute testimony to the siege. Two days
after that, a bomb penetrated the dome of Mosta Church but instead of exploding
merely bounced among the congregation. In the first weeks of 1942 ‘the number
of unexploded bombs from heavy daylight raids by German aircraft rose from 6 to
143 per week’ (p128).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Civilians
sought refuge in ‘the old railway tunnels in Valletta and Floriana, as well as
in the Hypogeum, a prehistoric underground burial place, and also the Catacombs
at Rabat’ (p15).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Royal Malta Artillery recruited ‘a motley crowd of clerks and farmers, shop
assistants and masons, intellectuals and illiterates’ (p34). In fact, as early
as September 1938, ‘3,000 volunteers enrolled in the Women’s Auxiliary Reserve
set up by Lady Bonham-Carter, the wife of the then Governor of Malta’ (p73). The
native RMA and the Royal Artillery raised a curtain of flame that was fearful
to behold... Captured German pilots admitted that they had been unnerved by it.
It probably saved the Island from devastation, saved many a British warship... Remarkable
was the stoicism of the civilians’ (p173).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Supplies
came by seagoing convoy, the first in September 1940 from Alexandria.
Subsequent convoys sailed from Gibraltar as well. Freight was also transported
by RN submarines, among them HM Submarines <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Porpoise,
Rorqual, Cachalot, Osiris</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Otus</i>
[While in SM drafting in the 1970s I sent men to submarines that bore these
names, but newer boats of the Porpoise and Oberon class, launched 1958 to the
1960s]. Submarines based in Malta attacked German convoys destined for Rommel’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Afrika Korps</i>, sending to the bottom
of the sea some 400,000 tons of supplies. In April 1942 HM Submarine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Upholder </i>was lost on her twenty-fifth
patrol.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Shortages
meant that improvisation was the order of the day; ‘men found fig and vine
leaves a substitute, albeit a distasteful one, for tobacco... women made coats
from blankets and dresses from curtains’ (p77). By September 1941 the only
unrationed items were bread, pasta, cheese, rice and tea. At this stage of the
war, the Enigma codes had been cracked and warnings of imminent attacks on
convoys could be countered. ‘Cigarette-smokers took a deep breath when, on October
30, 1942, after many months of enforced abstinence, an issue of 30 cigarettes a
week was introduced on a ration basis, to be increased to 50 with effect from January
15, 1943’ (p172).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘Radar...
is regarded as one of the main contributors to Malta’s defeat of the enemy.
Radio Direction Finding was first brought to Malta in Marsh 1939 when the Air
ministry Experimental Station was set up at Dingli Cliffs, one of the highest
spots on the Island’ (p83).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Allied
aircraft were transported by convoy but many were lost during the air-raids on
Ta’ Qali, Hal Far and Luqa airfields. ‘In answer to the 200-240 daily Axis
sorties, Malta could seldom muster more than six fighters at one time’ (p101).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
September, 1942, even while conflict still raged, the King presented the George
Cross to the Island Fortress and its people, acknowledging the ‘gallant
service’ the Maltese people had already rendered in the fight for freedom
(p120). On June 20, 1943 the King visited the Island, ‘sailing through a
hostile sea, with enemy air bases a mere 60 miles away’ (p184). He was given a
rapturous reception by civilians and the armed forces; he toured much of the Island
all day, witnessing the destruction and speaking to the Maltese. Prime Minister
Churchill visited the Island on November 17 for two days and President Roosevelt
arrived on December 8 and presented the people with a citation concerning their
‘valorous service above and beyond the call of duty’ (p197).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">With
the retreat of the Germans from Italy in 1944, few air-raids occurred and none
resulted in any further damage or deaths. The last alert sounded on August 28.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘...
looking back across the years, serving at Malta in spite of the hardships,
hunger and the constant presence of danger and death, is curiously one of these
parts of one’s life, which if given the chance, one would do all over again’ – Leo
Nomis, an American pilot flying from Ta’Qali (p154).<o:p></o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-12187718325391674852023-12-22T17:06:00.002+00:002023-12-22T17:06:26.778+00:00RESURRECTION DAY - Book review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF9_T87RoD2Je1_sCDxvY7i70PnJIlkXaWRLZOq-6GZkJBzspAlVG8-A-vdRfJCAtuy1fCGpjS2WNZ0K8LxtHRzqcKDf5IPFMN25cf2Bf_Kex6mBQxcD6Ly7VNKquIvYXmZRs5xAb6brtNyd_2_UCPjXVtzWRej4Z_ZQult61saRcfhzCUMyp75YQkpHU-/s1383/RESURRECTION%20DAY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1383" data-original-width="833" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF9_T87RoD2Je1_sCDxvY7i70PnJIlkXaWRLZOq-6GZkJBzspAlVG8-A-vdRfJCAtuy1fCGpjS2WNZ0K8LxtHRzqcKDf5IPFMN25cf2Bf_Kex6mBQxcD6Ly7VNKquIvYXmZRs5xAb6brtNyd_2_UCPjXVtzWRej4Z_ZQult61saRcfhzCUMyp75YQkpHU-/s320/RESURRECTION%20DAY.jpg" width="193" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Brendan
DuBois’s alternate history novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Resurrection
Day</i> was published in 1999. The ‘what if?’ scenario is tantalising indeed: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What if the Cuban Missile Crisis had become
a full-blown war?</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
1972, ten years after the nuclear bombs were dropped. Russia was crushed: ‘...
no more large cities, no more government. Just tribes of people, trying to
survive in muddy villages that could have existed in the Middle Ages, a decade after
an entity called SAC had obliterated their nation from the earth’ (p65). California
is virtually destroyed, New York has been depopulated, Washington DC lies
beneath a giant crater lake. Europe is unscathed – Nato collapsed. Presidential
elections are due at the end of the year. What was left of the United States
relied on aid from Great Britain; the USA was shamed and ostracised by the
international community because it let the nuclear genie out of the bottle.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Carl
Landry, ex-US Army, is now a civilian, a journalist on the <i>Boston Globe</i> newspaper.
The paper is heavily edited by an army Captain in accordance with the Martial Law
Declaration of 1962 and the National Emergency Declaration of 1963. The Land of
the Free no longer has free speech. ‘Why torture yourself, remembering<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>full supermarket shelves, clean clothes,
steady power, and a government that didn’t hunt down draft dodgers and didn’t
censor the news and didn’t run labour camps for the dissidents, the protesters,
the ones that didn’t belong. That time was gone, was never coming back, not
ever’ (p99).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Landry
is approached by an aging veteran who has some important papers; they arrange
to meet next day, but the vet is murdered, his apartment trashed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Making
enquiries, Landry learns of the deaths of the vet’s neighbours and friends. ‘...
when the current national death rates and the results of the 1970 census were
both kept secret because of national security, well, if life wasn’t cheap, it
certainly wasn’t worth much’ (p51).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He
begins to dig – and is warned off more than once: ‘Carl knew he had entered the
murky land of late-night arrests, ‘disappearances’, and closed-door trials’ (p162).
He was also attacked by an orfie gang – comprising feral orphans of the war.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He
befriends Sandy Price, a journalist for the Times of London. She’s beautiful
and clever. When they are both co-opted on a fact-finding mission to New York for
their papers, they jump at the chance. And then things get weird and hairy, not
least because there’s a faction that believes President Kennedy didn’t die in Washington,
but still lives; his resurrection could screw the forthcoming elections, indeed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">DuBois
has managed to create believable and often sympathetic characters, as well as a
post-war situation that seems credible. It was an immersive experience. I
zipped through the 580 pages in no time.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">An
impressive addition to the vast library of ‘what if?’ novels.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Editorial comment:</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘Think,
he thought. Just take a deep breath and think’ (p471). Probably would have read
better like this: Think, dammit. Just take a deep breath and think. No need for
‘he thought’.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Character
names: Jim Rowley and Captain Rowland are quite close; never cause confusion but
could easily have been more different.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-30354802723367181692023-12-13T13:08:00.000+00:002023-12-13T13:08:21.464+00:00THE MUMMY - Book review<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzSPRVnPeFR0Ae1pYN-N0IwqnrfCDmYH7qjadB_BG65qmrByGeh-SVUjFoYevCmO8s3kHf2CxNMnG6V2bfiR44T8rn3s4T3FH9PrsYU2z8RUFYEZu5R7qKeNXco1sE85fYEEt9kTHFQFs7uyG3NjQ0g2q4a9mIy23IDZ8QAREqbXlWVns7wWVGK6RjWLk0/s1407/THE%20MUMMY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1407" data-original-width="864" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzSPRVnPeFR0Ae1pYN-N0IwqnrfCDmYH7qjadB_BG65qmrByGeh-SVUjFoYevCmO8s3kHf2CxNMnG6V2bfiR44T8rn3s4T3FH9PrsYU2z8RUFYEZu5R7qKeNXco1sE85fYEEt9kTHFQFs7uyG3NjQ0g2q4a9mIy23IDZ8QAREqbXlWVns7wWVGK6RjWLk0/s320/THE%20MUMMY.jpg" width="197" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Anne
Rice’s 1989 novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Mummy</i> (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">or Ramses the Damned</i>) is not a
novelisation of the Brendan Fraser film (which came out ten years later!)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apparently, Rice began this as a film script
but she and the studios had conflicting visions about the story so she
abandoned the screenplay idea and wrote the book.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
a seductive read that begins slowly and then develops with intrigue and murder.
It’s 1914, before Carter has found the tomb of Tutankhamen. Archaeologist
Lawrence Stratford has uncovered the tomb of Ramses the Great. Puzzlingly,
there seems a link to the Egyptian ruler Cleopatra, yet Ramses’ reign was many
years before the Queen of the Nile was born... Accompanying Lawrence is his
nephew Henry Stratford, a ne’er-do-well. Lawrence’s daughter Julie was in
London with her fiancé Alex Savarell, Viscount Summerfield, the son of Elliott,
the Earl of Rutherford. The marriage had been arranged when they were children;
through this marriage the Rutherford family would gain the Stratford wealth in
exchange for the title. However, Julie was a strong-willed independent-minded
woman, so the courtship was not going anywhere fast.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
is no spoiler since the blurb announces the fact: Ramses the mummified king
awakens and appears before Julie in a dramatic scene. ‘Dear God, she thought,
this is not merely a man gifted with beauty; this is the most beautiful man
I’ve ever seen’ (p92).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
reason for Ramses not being a dry husk of a mummy is that he was merely
dormant, not dead, and was revived by sunlight. He was immortal, three thousand
years old, having drunk an elixir centuries ago. He does not need sleep or
food, though he is impelled to satisfy appetites that he cannot assuage.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
book is a visual feast: we can envisage the scenes in their entirety. It’s
sensuous, particularly as love develops between Julie and Ramses. Conflict is
supplied by the unsavoury Henry, who is not averse to killing to get what he
wants, and the newly discovered Cleopatra, Ramses’ lost love.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
are many light and amusing touches as Ramses learns about the early twentieth
century. He is a fast study, particularly as he does not need sleep. Over the
centuries when he roamed the earth he learned a number of languages, too. He
adopted the name Reginald Ramsey in order to accompany Julie on their forays
through society, all part of his education.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">While
they are touring Cairo, accompanied by Elliott and Henry, mysterious deaths
occur. Mr Ramsey falls under suspicion...</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Cleverly
plotted, the story reveals the problems of immortality and ever-lasting love.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
book ends with the promise of further adventures of Ramses the Damned; but
there was a long wait! There is no great need to take up the sequels, however;
the ending of this book was satisfactory enough for me.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
sequels, co-written with her son Christopher are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra</i> (2017) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris</i>
(2022). Anne Rice dided in 2021, aged 80.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-21613831528886268972023-12-05T15:00:00.001+00:002023-12-05T15:00:00.135+00:00SOE AGENT - book review<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC-YqjPA964q6EqH60R660xi6KjC8L038-e_spqwDnnAafY0-zO5fl29f_gxPqYFgwYzh8olz2KCSIJEef8qf8mVU1u-gUBxQ0HfdS5__5_HZm_tjnCqxtks5EAF4aKhbx9EmjliGvBfGMN4suKXIPiCoHCVkZICCpfQ2OnFFIqGt0qKWbIxcy9HztvsYj/s1941/SOE%20AGENT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1941" data-original-width="1434" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC-YqjPA964q6EqH60R660xi6KjC8L038-e_spqwDnnAafY0-zO5fl29f_gxPqYFgwYzh8olz2KCSIJEef8qf8mVU1u-gUBxQ0HfdS5__5_HZm_tjnCqxtks5EAF4aKhbx9EmjliGvBfGMN4suKXIPiCoHCVkZICCpfQ2OnFFIqGt0qKWbIxcy9HztvsYj/s320/SOE%20AGENT.jpg" width="236" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
subtitle of the Osprey book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SOE Agent</i>
is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Churchill’s Secret Warriors</i>; text
by Terry Crowdy, colour illustrations by Steve Noon. This is number 133 in the Warrior
series of Osprey books. There are 62 information-packed pages with many
contemporary photographs.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘Nazi
control on the continent was like a virus, intent on infiltrating every level
of human existence and perverting it for its own satisfaction’ (p5).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Britain's Minister of Economic Warfare, Hugh Dalton
was convinced a new organisation should be created to infiltrate Europe and the ‘new
weapons of war would be agitation, strikes, random acts of terror, propaganda
and assassination’ – effectively, ‘no holds barred’ (p5).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As
early as September 1938 MI6 set up D Section (Sabotage) and the British General
Staff formed a research section GS(R) to investigate the possibilities of
guerrilla warfare; in May the following year this became Military Intelligence (Research). September 1939 Britain and France declared war on Germany after Hitler invaded Poland.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
book covers the recruitment of SOE agents, their training, and some of their
missions, Lysander pickup, coding of messages, and their weapons and types of
radio. It is a little treasure-trove for students and writers of that period. Certainly,
having recently read Ken Follett’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jackdaws</i>,
I could recognise many salient facts that he used in his narrative.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Related
titles in the series are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">French Resistance
Fighter </i>and<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Resistance Warfare
1940-45</i>; and in the Elite series: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Office
of Strategic Services (OSS) 1942-45</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-41412456015535379552023-12-04T17:12:00.001+00:002023-12-04T17:12:00.141+00:00THE MELTING MAN - book review<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTbg8dQ_Q8gWyr8LBIAcw0IfBxHT18tYduuqmSafOn4TRTtSHDmteOKQL6tc2XWcDjvhfKF3KogYpVCuWAV-kAnNqGhYWYHNrWikz052AXdb4XiY5SVjDI5MIz4HCrx2NpeNHEO0b-desxmupZnxw415Bx89Bj2T2UNQWQNh_teC5doQf_FZEMDcuzBeJD/s1584/THE%20MELTING%20MAN.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1584" data-original-width="1045" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTbg8dQ_Q8gWyr8LBIAcw0IfBxHT18tYduuqmSafOn4TRTtSHDmteOKQL6tc2XWcDjvhfKF3KogYpVCuWAV-kAnNqGhYWYHNrWikz052AXdb4XiY5SVjDI5MIz4HCrx2NpeNHEO0b-desxmupZnxw415Bx89Bj2T2UNQWQNh_teC5doQf_FZEMDcuzBeJD/s320/THE%20MELTING%20MAN.jpg" width="211" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In
the mid-1960s I read a few books by Victor Canning and thoroughly enjoyed them.
For some reason I didn’t read any more (maybe suborned by Helen MacInnes, Len Deighton,
Ian Fleming, Gavin Lyall, and Desmond Cory, among others!); </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">that is, until now, taking up his 1968
thriller </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The Melting Man</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">, a collector’s
item.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
is the fourth (and final) thriller featuring the investigator Rex Carver. Narrated
in first-person, it begins with Carver contemplating a holiday, despite the
fact that the firm’s bank balance could benefit from an injection of new cash. ‘...
eleven months of the year I worked, if it was there to work at, but come September,
season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, I took a holiday’ (p9). He told his business
partner Hilda Wilkins, ‘I need feeding up.’ She pointedly looked at his lowest
waistcoat button and said, ‘That’s not the impression I get’ (p2).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">From
the outset, the style grabs, with plenty of one-liners, amusing asides, and
colourful descriptions. From time to time Carver undergoes a session in the gym
run by Miggs, an ex-Commando sergeant who takes one look at Carver and says, ‘My
God – a young man in an old man’s body. You’d better let me book you in for a
dozen sessions...’ Carver responded: ‘I like to put it on around September. Live
off my fat during the winter. Bears do it’ (p6).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">His
holidaying intentions are waylaid by the arrival in the office of beautiful Julia
Yung-Brown. He’d been recommended to her by Miggs: ‘But you don’t quite come up
to the description Miggs gave of you. Sort of blurred around the edges somewhere.’
He riposted: ‘Come autumn I begin to disintegrate a little. My best month is May’
(p11).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Despite
inferring that Carver was unfit, he manages to hold his own, surviving more
than one knock on the head, a near-drowning and a bomb in his car!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Julia
and her sister Zelia are the step-daughters of millionaire Cavan O’Dowda, a man
with a ruthless reputation. Apparently, Zelia went missing while driving her
stepfather’s Mercedes 250 SL in France. Zelia subsequently turned up in Cannes
with memory loss and no car. O’Dowda wants Rex to find the car. Simple.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He
sets out on the trail of the car – Geneva, Cannes, Turin. And is tracked by his
old Interpol pal Aristide Marchissy la Dole as well as the eccentric Alakwe
brothers, Jimbo and Najib, together with their sex-mad 6ft 4” lethal assistant Miss
Panda Bubakar. It’s obvious that there’s something hidden inside the car that
is highly valuable to all the interested actors.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Aristide
has appeared in earlier books. He likes his food, particularly if they’re Carver’s
croissants ‘which were first made in Budapest in 1686. That is the year the Turks
besieged the city. They dug underground passages beneath the city walls at night,
but the bakers – naturally working at that hour – heard them, gave the alarm
and Johnny Turk was thrown out. In return the bakers were given the privilege
of making a special pastry in the form of the crescent moon which still
decorates the Ottoman flag’ (p188).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
pace is fast, the characters are larger-than-life, the threats quite real, and
the denouement in the millionaire’s mountain chateau is both intense and grim,
with a dark and unexpected twist.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Even
after fifty-five years, this is a satisfying and entertaining, page-turning
thriller.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">You
can get a used copy for the price of a beer; all four Rex Carver books are
available as e-books.</span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-51946709588909603202023-12-03T16:05:00.001+00:002023-12-03T16:05:00.138+00:00THE TUMBLED HOUSE - book review<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitVDb0lnr6bL4CRhtQ6L2lObmdNh1rg4IttYLxJnBewL8ToXRvU6UzBlTqvVBge7BtRqAafJhFJVBJRvSE33xwFrh2-3vGWccn2y2DaFEwDi6kUNWTosG6WsMEAUnfDta98j-0vuzYfvY9hIyKfHv4eTUS0SfQSx12ki_CeMENO8rwHx1GICM1vplufcxW/s1399/Graham%20TUMBLED%20HOUSE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1399" data-original-width="837" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitVDb0lnr6bL4CRhtQ6L2lObmdNh1rg4IttYLxJnBewL8ToXRvU6UzBlTqvVBge7BtRqAafJhFJVBJRvSE33xwFrh2-3vGWccn2y2DaFEwDi6kUNWTosG6WsMEAUnfDta98j-0vuzYfvY9hIyKfHv4eTUS0SfQSx12ki_CeMENO8rwHx1GICM1vplufcxW/s320/Graham%20TUMBLED%20HOUSE.jpg" width="191" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Winston
Graham’s 1959 novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tumbled House</i>
is a romantic suspense novel long out of print; my copy is the fourth
impression dated 1976.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">While
dropping in on the empty house of her late father-in-law Sir John Marlowe, Joanna
commits adultery with an ex-boyfriend Roger Shorn. It is not an affair; perhaps
she was lonely since her husband Don, a feted conductor, was away in the States
with an orchestra.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Shortly
after Don’s return, a couple of anonymous articles are published in a
newspaper, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Gazette</i>, denigrating Sir
John, claiming the great man plagiarised a book by an old associate (also
deceased).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Don
is incandescent and determined to discover the writer’s identity and clear his
father’s name. He seeks legal advice but that’s not much help as you can’t
libel a dead person. ‘What was the purpose of attacking the reputation of a
dead man unless there was someone still alive to care?’ (p73). He has the
sympathy of Joanna and his sister Bennie but ignores their suggestion that he
forget the whole issue.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Unable
to forgive and forget, Don finally learns of the writer’s identity and writes insults
against the culprit. The added complication is that Bennie is in a relationship
with the son of the writer.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
should be a fairly anodyne court case, but the interweaving of the
personalities involved and the minor crimes on the periphery that affect Bennie
and her beau Michael keep the reader turning the pages.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What
lifts the book above the norm is Graham’s acute observation of character and
place. The point of view is omniscient. Here are a few examples.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘The
Red Boar Club... Here the temperature was a uniform seventy-eight winter and
summer, and tobacco-smoke hung in cirrus clouds about the room. You broke
through them going down the steps like a plane coming in to land’ (p38).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
the club Don approaches the editor of the offending<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Gazette</i>: ‘He had a square rather distinguished face on which the
skin hung loosely as if it had a slow puncture. But there was nothing deflated
about the way he looked at Don...’ (p39).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘Sir
Percy... was not expensively dressed and his Cockney accent still clung to him
like a home-knitted pullover’ (p59).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘When
he opened the door the sunlight crowded in as if it had been queuing there’ (p72).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘An
artist of course was judged by his art, not by his life. It didn’t matter two-pence
if Rembrandt was a rogue or Beethoven a bore... (p100) – though in the idiotic modern
age of cancel culture that may no longer apply!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Despite
the suspense, and Don discovering Joanna’s infidelity, there are smatterings of
humour: asked about Don’s interpretation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Swan
Lake</i>, he responded, ‘It could well be the most original. Phone Leningrad
and tell them to watch Tchaikovsky’s grave. If there’s movement, it’ll mean he’s
turning over in it’ (p128).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘She
stared at him with unwinking eyes, a stout old lady with a bulging face like a
purse that has never been opened for charity’ (p148).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘...
when they rode together the sun was slanting, and a breeze that came up from
the sea had made the young leaves turn and glint like wild silk’ (p174).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘...
his grey, pachydermous face wearing a weary, dusty expression as if too many
years of exposing human frailty had left him without illusions and without hope’
(p298).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Bearing
in mind the time of writing, there are two uses of the n-word and an allusion
to gays before that term was the acceptable description, none of which are
malicious.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Graham
describes a death without being mawkish: less is more.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
ending is satisfactory.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-65324245193156402382023-12-02T14:42:00.007+00:002023-12-02T14:42:57.932+00:00SHARPE'S COMMAND - Book review<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZlfUqmQy08kADKZ1MVY2TO6pQYiq67adgwXxlB7bey-wi9IZYNLwY5qXNSZKG93lOcLZ2wB0Lmlb0vg20mjHlV_gup0gceO5lvvTPqguXREr177GCrEgaLsnDQhGMxnjyMLPoW9-VgIgNhySDBwLESyC9oKCLnCfecML1EGfg0TZhQBg-u5LiFN2Gj_cv/s1902/SHARPES%20COMMAND.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1902" data-original-width="1249" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZlfUqmQy08kADKZ1MVY2TO6pQYiq67adgwXxlB7bey-wi9IZYNLwY5qXNSZKG93lOcLZ2wB0Lmlb0vg20mjHlV_gup0gceO5lvvTPqguXREr177GCrEgaLsnDQhGMxnjyMLPoW9-VgIgNhySDBwLESyC9oKCLnCfecML1EGfg0TZhQBg-u5LiFN2Gj_cv/s320/SHARPES%20COMMAND.jpg" width="210" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p>Bernard
Cornwell’s latest (2023) Sharpe adventure </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Sharpe’s
Command</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> places our hero at the battle of the Bridge at Almaraz, 1812 – as usual,
based on historical events.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Major
Sharpe is leading his Chosen Men, with sergeant Harper and the familiar other
characters. They are behind enemy lines, intent on preventing the French from
crossing the bridge to reinforce one of their forts which is soon to be under British
siege.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Needless
to say, he triumphs after a number of setbacks, this time aided by his wife Teresa
and her guerrillas. Some of the impediments are due to betrayal by presumed
allies, and others by the incompetence of British officers.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">If
you’ve watched any of the Sharpe TV films then you’ll be familiar with the
characters and can even hear their voices as they speak from the page. If you
haven’t, you’ll still enjoy an engaging and fascinating adventure sprinkled
with knowledge about rifles, muskets and big guns! We meet again major Hogan
who this time opines ‘A wise man once said that the best way to win a war is to
do it without fighting’ (p210). He was doubtless quoting from Sun Tzu’s <i>Strategy of War</i>: ‘To subdue the enemy
without fighting is the supreme excellence.’</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
would be unfair to go into details (spoilers) about the book. There’s
historical fact, humour, bravery, and blood and gore. The usual ingredients for
a fast-paced Sharpe read.</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">***</span></p>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Like C S Forester
with his hero Hornblower, Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels are not written in
historical chronological order. Of his twenty-three Sharpe books, this is the fourteenth
in chronological order, preceded by <i>Sharpe’s
Company</i> and followed by <i>Sharpe’s Sword</i>.
It’s not essential to read them in historical order, though it’s recommended as
some main characters do die in the series (though it’s a good way to meet again
some who later die, if that isn’t too confusing!)</span>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-43714760141261065722023-11-06T15:47:00.006+00:002023-11-06T15:56:30.770+00:00JACKDAWS - book review<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7Cn2ctLJWu8D6NT5VZnPfE9_sJb6_6ODM5YC-L-rCxlOCFqyO_qloaAmGnitdYoKa5iWfq2Ueq1oT7efQIIYPpmegavWFS0jHmGtZ3ghkXIfKdNjhasBaNEDaqW5JUnVJzSdUtkjWCjMsEDGGnDa9RqhEcldBkQy5IeJ6sY5g1oc6f8a2nQOGjqVaSLzL/s1379/JACKDAWS.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1379" data-original-width="856" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7Cn2ctLJWu8D6NT5VZnPfE9_sJb6_6ODM5YC-L-rCxlOCFqyO_qloaAmGnitdYoKa5iWfq2Ueq1oT7efQIIYPpmegavWFS0jHmGtZ3ghkXIfKdNjhasBaNEDaqW5JUnVJzSdUtkjWCjMsEDGGnDa9RqhEcldBkQy5IeJ6sY5g1oc6f8a2nQOGjqVaSLzL/s320/JACKDAWS.jpg" width="199" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The
prolific Ken Follett’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jackdaws</i> was
published in 2001. His output is varied and broad in theme and place and time. Here,
he returns to the Second World War and spies – some twenty-three years after his WWII debut novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eye of the Needle</i>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The
story covers the nine days before D-Day, June 6, 1944. Twenty-eight-year-old Felicity 'Flick' Clairet, an SOE agent is leading a Resistance assault on a French chateau in the
village of Sainte-Cecile, the German communications hub for the area. But it
goes wrong and she and her French husband barely manage to escape. Some of
their team are killed and others are captured.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The
German interrogator is Colonel Dieter Franck who, while not enjoying inflicting
pain on his victims, is good at it. The Germans are aware that an invasion is
about to occur soon and that will entail the rising up of many Resistance
cells. He is certain that if he can break the will of his captives, he can
learn details about the various groups.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Flick
returns to England and is given permission to try again to crack the chateau
communications hub. She recruits the Jackdaws, a ‘dirty half-dozen’ – all-female
team to infiltrate in place of the regular cleaners. Not all of them will
survive...</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This
is a typical Follett page-turner with characters you soon come to know and care
about. Even Franck evokes a measure of sympathy. The interrogators, the
invaders, considered the SOE agents as terrorists. Both sides were ruthless. In
these sensitive times perhaps some readers will find certain aspects of the
violence depicted as distressing; yet this kind of thing – and worse – happened.
I’ve read a number of nonfiction and fiction books about the SOE and Follett’s
research seems very accurate – and never slows the pace.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">If
you want an involving fast read, this suspenseful thriller will fit the bill.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Editorial comment</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Blame
the editor. On p312 a coded message mentions Friday 1 June. Yet on p315 we’re
told that Friday is 2 June. Oops. [Hopefully it has been amended since my 2002
edition].<o:p></o:p></span></p><br /></span><p></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-78824858670463818392023-11-05T16:28:00.001+00:002023-11-05T16:28:24.974+00:00NOBBUT A LAD - book review<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk8fNRtz9GPDx3Se-kAxb75nkauAe3uwvICUjVCuasLWcv4UWEuYxTlXLggPW-pVq5MErqmkh2M8_WK-ov3pHyEuyJSVCZQ_NuJHCP8JKRwP7a9In622HiM7HyBljPNnRrQe2kPrU9K70fp9ijYnJ2_Ps_GvgY3n-VR5FntvkqgpweqtzvqTWQNYnG08VZ/s1548/NOBBUT%20A%20LAD.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1548" data-original-width="1002" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk8fNRtz9GPDx3Se-kAxb75nkauAe3uwvICUjVCuasLWcv4UWEuYxTlXLggPW-pVq5MErqmkh2M8_WK-ov3pHyEuyJSVCZQ_NuJHCP8JKRwP7a9In622HiM7HyBljPNnRrQe2kPrU9K70fp9ijYnJ2_Ps_GvgY3n-VR5FntvkqgpweqtzvqTWQNYnG08VZ/s320/NOBBUT%20A%20LAD.jpg" width="207" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Alan
Titchmarsh’s memoir <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nobbut a Lad – A Yorkshire
childhood</i> was published in 2006.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Titchmarsh
is familiar to UK television viewers through his gardening and other programmes.
He was born in May 1949 – so to me he is a contemporary and many of his
reminiscences echo experiences I enjoyed in childhood. His novels show that he can
write as well as attend to horticulture, and this endearing and at times
touching book is enlivened not only with his good writing style but also with a
wry sense of humour. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So
this is his story – ‘Not that it was without incident or occasional tragedy. But
that’s growing up. And growing up, even in the best of all possible worlds, is
a confusing thing to have to do’ (p9). </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 16px;">This definitely is not a 'misery memoir'.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He
was brought up proper. ‘At all times men walked on the outside of the pavement,
ladies on the inside. I still do, even though it does sometimes cause confusion
when after crossing the road, the woman I am walking with discovers that I’m
not where I was’ (p15). [I used to do the same. I suspect the courtesy stems
from those days when roadways were plagued by puddles and the wheels of passing
carriages were liable to splash pedestrians. I don’t do it with my wife Jen; I
always walk on her right-hand side, it’s her good ear. So part of the time I’m
the gentleman of old, at others, not!]</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
was the time of steam trains. On one jaunt to London with his parents he found
himself on the famous <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mallard</i>. He
chatted with the driver and said ‘I want to be an engine driver’ to which the
driver replied, ‘Aye, but you’re nobbut a lad.’ Alan said firmly, ‘When I grow
up I mean’ (p141). His career path took a different turn, of course, like so
many others who wanted to be train drivers or astronauts or even cowboys!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He
lovingly describes many amusing anecdotes, sometimes against himself, and is
never malicious. At one time the family had an upright piano in the parlour and
Alan determined to learn to drive a car with the instrument’s help. He needed a
walking stick and a flowerpot. He turned the flowerpot upside down and stuck
the stick in the drainage hole in the pot; this served as the gear-lever. Then
he’d use the three foot-pedals of the piano as the accelerator, clutch and brake.
Until his father had enough of Alan’s revving sounds and suggested ‘Put the car
in the garage and go to bed’ (p249).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘Impressing
my parents was more important to me than almost anything else. It seemed a way
of repaying their confidence and the energy and effort they’d put into bringing
us up during those tough years after the war’ (p325).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘Since
being a lad, I’ve had a love affair with horses – in paint and in the flesh. The
works of George Stubbs and Sir Alfred Munnings thrill me like no other. Dogs
command affection, cats command attention, but horses command respect’ (p271) [In
his 2008 novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Folly</i> he actually has Munnings
as a character].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘Collecting
things was something we all felt driven to do; there was some kind of security
in ownership of a collection, some kind of status. In leaner weeks we’d search
through the dustbins at the back of the bus garage... We’d pull out cigarette
packets and tear off the front and back covers so that each became a crude
playing card. With these we’d play snap, and feel as rich as a king when we
scooped a whole pile of them’ (p292).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘My
pocket money amounted to one shilling. It never changed for years, it seemed. It
didn’t buy much, but most of it went in Woolworths on seeds, or construction
kits...’ (p295).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘The
fact that I failed my eleven-plus came as no surprise to anybody, least of all
me... I can recall that feeling now – the feeling of trying to knit fog. I
caught up in the years that followed; but at the age of eleven it is no
consolation to know that you are a late developer’ (p300).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘I
should have been better at science, bearing in mind my future, but Miss Sutcliffe
– known as “the Improper Fraction” (top-heavy) – was a loud woman who
frightened the life out of me. When she bawled at you, “Acids must be respected!”
you felt obliged to scatter the vinegar on to your fish and chips with
particular care’ (p304).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">These
snippets don’t do the book justice. Alan Titchmarsh has a sharp eye for detail –
also evinced in his novels – and here provides the reader with vivid recall of people
and times long gone, but not forgotten. Here he shows us the various local characters
and teachers who became powerful influences in his early life.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Also
included are photographs of his family, which many of us can relate to in the
style and composition. Plus the author has inserted several line drawings to
illustrate certain events and things.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nostalgia
may not be what it used to be, but it’s here in this book in spades!<o:p></o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-708564682075647232023-10-28T14:39:00.005+00:002023-10-28T14:39:00.161+00:00IN SOLITARY - Book review<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4V3ttiEA392VQZmgcSVuddGE7k5QQPkdMgFE9Mp4Cva840yZv8vtjJofcLr9GNrCJtw7GPMQNzeddLZoJ9WmVoEHXzWH13TnhJigeSvLSajMSXvQbTLyYsYvTty70COsxsNUL3aT61pcDe82vTwO1YDweAU-FfDS1WB6XRqDmB59C_immS0YamyF8cSkZ/s1419/KILWORTH-IN%20SOLITARY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1419" data-original-width="856" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4V3ttiEA392VQZmgcSVuddGE7k5QQPkdMgFE9Mp4Cva840yZv8vtjJofcLr9GNrCJtw7GPMQNzeddLZoJ9WmVoEHXzWH13TnhJigeSvLSajMSXvQbTLyYsYvTty70COsxsNUL3aT61pcDe82vTwO1YDweAU-FfDS1WB6XRqDmB59C_immS0YamyF8cSkZ/s320/KILWORTH-IN%20SOLITARY.jpg" width="193" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Garry
Kilworth’s debut novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In Solitary</i>
was published in 1977. Since then he has produced novels in a broad number of genres, among
them science fiction, fantasy, and history.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Earth
has been under the domination of aliens for centuries. The Soal are
uncompromising, their laws stating: ‘No member of the Human Race born a native
of the Planet Earth may have contact with any other such native by any medium,
natural or otherwise, after the age of 170 months [just over 14 years-of-age]
except for the performance of mating. No member of the Human Race under 170
months of age born a native of the Planet Earth may have contact with any male
member of the same race. The penalty for disobedience of the Soal Law is death’
(p6). Hence, the males are effectively ‘in solitary’ all their life (save for
the rare mating events).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Soal resemble birds with pointed beak-like faces and a web of elastic skin
joining the upper and lower limbs; fine hair-like feathers cover their bodies. They’re
about a metre tall – ‘more like flying foxes than birds’ (p8).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
book begins with Tangiia – a native Polynesian – embarking to sea on a mating
journey in the Oceania area near Ostraylea. Apparently the earthquake of 2083 Old
Time had altered the physical relationship between Brytan and Yurop. Apart from
the first chapter, the novel is in the first-person, related by another human, Cave,
who is serving the Soal in Brytan – until he is banished to live among the mud
people… Here, Cave meets a female, Stella, who is quite formidable. They live
in tall towers – mushrooms – and barely subsist. Eventually, these two join
forces with others, including Tangiia – all the while evading Soal patrols for,
clearly, if they were caught congregating, they would be killed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Of
them all, Tangiia is the romantic: ‘She is what makes it so beautiful. Man was
made to have woman by his side, otherwise there are just empty holes in our
chests where our hearts should be’ (p70).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Kilworth
has created an original scenario and populated it with humans and aliens who
exhibit all the usual traits – anger, deceit, violence, hate and love. And
close to the end, after a rebellion against the Soal, a twist in the tale is
revealed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">At
139 pages, it is a short book, but packed with fascinating descriptions of an
unusual environment and traumatic events.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-43006015164854575662023-10-26T14:39:00.003+00:002023-11-12T16:21:51.017+00:00THE INFORMATION OFFICER - Book review<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2_8D8A7_YSb8xNawmHJyheqyc0iQddl9q6ppPPhtIv8JGkC0jqIdnHKjGh3zYqr9KqUe_Wfl996mGhQRhl81xrkA-3SJQ5f8l_XugV7_eEqnL1ucz2thO8WYvnLl8B6xdPWn6HEQFRe33Drhyphenhyphen7Tqbo2UmBeg_ZLp5OsRTaVPaNFr0ZmFiAbX1NxjmFPR1/s1405/INFORMATION%20OFFICER.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1405" data-original-width="837" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2_8D8A7_YSb8xNawmHJyheqyc0iQddl9q6ppPPhtIv8JGkC0jqIdnHKjGh3zYqr9KqUe_Wfl996mGhQRhl81xrkA-3SJQ5f8l_XugV7_eEqnL1ucz2thO8WYvnLl8B6xdPWn6HEQFRe33Drhyphenhyphen7Tqbo2UmBeg_ZLp5OsRTaVPaNFr0ZmFiAbX1NxjmFPR1/s320/INFORMATION%20OFFICER.jpg" width="191" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This
is the third book by Mark Mills – each one different in place and time. </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The Information Officer</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> was published in
2009. It’s set in Malta in 1942 during the second great siege (the
first being against the Turks in 1565). [The book brought back memories of the
time my wife Jen and I lived in Rabat in 1974-75].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There
are two maps – one of the Maltese islands with significant places shown; and a
second of the Grand Harbour – which will prove helpful if you’re unfamiliar with
Malta.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It
begins (mistakenly in my opinion) in London, May 1951 with a viewpoint by a
restaurant’s maître d’ with the hint of a spoiler. The real story begins in
Malta, April 1942 when a young woman is murdered.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Major
Max Chadwick is the Information Officer in Malta, responsible for reporting to
the populace with suitable material to maintain morale. Max has a number of
friends, among them Freddie, the medic who works out of Mtarfa hospital [I
worked there in the 1970s; it’s now a school and apartments]; Elliott, an
American serviceman; and Ralph, a cavalier pilot.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">When
Max is told that there have been three young women murdered yet the authorities
seem to be hushing it up, he decides to do some private investigating himself.
Digging around for clues is not easy for an amateur, granted, and it is made more
difficult by the wartime conditions, notably the constant air raids.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The
submarine base on Manoel Island, the Tenth Submarine Flotilla, was one of
several targets for Italian and German bombers; inevitably, the airfields were
prime targets too: Ta’ Qali, Hal Far and Luqa; and of course the many quaysides
and docks of the Grand Harbour and its inlets. [Jen learned to drive in Malta and took her driving-test on the old
airfield at Ta’ Qali].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Mills
quickly immerses the reader in the place and period. ‘It was typical of many
Maltese homes in that the unassuming façade gave no indication of the treasures
that lay behind it’ (p21). [When living there we’d seen many examples of this.]
He also has a fine turn of phrase: I liked his ‘bewilderment of bastions’ when
describing Valletta.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">‘…he
accompanied her and her mangy dog to the Blessing of the Animals at the church
of Santa Maria Vittoriosa’ (p130). [We’d seen these ceremonies in Malta and
Spain].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">‘…
he’d been forced to crash-land in a field – a near-impossible thing to do on
Malta without hitting a stone wall’ (p191). [Not much has changed with this
overbuilt island].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">‘The
Point de Vue Hotel stood on the south side of the Saqqija, the leafy square
separating Mdina and Rabat’ (p230). The hotel ‘took a direct hit during an
afternoon raid, killing six’ (p230). [We enjoyed a splendid meal here].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">He
mentions the megalithic temples of Hagar Qim and Mnajdra (p243) and on the same
page on Dingli Cliffs the primary Radio Direction Finding station is found
there; [even now, though the spying is somewhat more sophisticated].</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">He
conveys the absolute terror of living through intense bombing day after day.
‘The ground beneath him had bucked like a living thing, and all around him the
air had rung to the tune of flying splinters, a lethal symphony of rock and
metal overlaid by more obvious notes: the whistle and shriek of falling bombs,
the thump and crump of explosions, the staccato bark of the Bofors firing back
blind, and the screams of the diving Stukas’ (p43).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Intermittently,
we are privy to the male murderer’s thoughts, jotted down in his notebook,
though he remains faceless; a man without empathy, a thoroughly unpleasant
specimen. The mystery of his identity is maintained almost to the end.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It
was obvious that Mills did a lot of research for the story and highlights two
of the many books he consulted: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Malta
Magnificent</i> by Francis Gerard and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fortress
Malta</i> by James Holland. ‘Twice the tonnage of bombs dropped on London
during the worst twelve months of the Blitz had rained down on their heads in
the last two months alone’ (p61).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There
are a couple of interesting choices of character names he has used:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; color: #202122; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Chadwick lakes are formed behind a number of
dams constructed by Sir Osbert Chadwick, a British engineer, in the late 19th
century.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Mabel
Edeline Strickland was the editor of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Times of Malta</i> before and during the war. Mills’s book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Savage Garden</i> has a main character called Adam Strickland…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">If
you have any interest in wartime skulduggery or Malta, you should find the book
a fascinating read.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I’d
also recommend <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Malta: Blitzed but not
Beaten</i> by Philip Vella. And of course Nicholas Monsarrat’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Kappillan of Malta</i>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Editorial comment.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Two
characters go to see a film at the Rabat Plaza (p229). Jen and I often went to
the Adelphi cinema in Rabat (sometimes twice a week!); according to the Old Cinemas
in Malta Facebook group, Rabat has only ever had two cinemas – the Adelphi and the
Astoria. <o:p></o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-43599624453034403832023-10-14T15:32:00.000+00:002023-10-14T15:32:06.195+00:00THE NIGHT OF KADAR - Book review<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4VF6nt-Mi-xKN2HcoPRVee9mUuZQwqBDoNkeylsIEaYq_70bO600eo6DDzUgK4HkAUiX_lwOwMfi-oqpDRoTMF8ouUfmaWLhucKXMufZi_fcDyF-fdPP1X329AAc1Ffz1EZ4F_xidmeeWNeQj48zrltF75sQxAQ85uDJINEojR65tzBzgiwzCD3piu_0u/s1568/KILLWORTH-NIGHT%20OF%20KADAR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1568" data-original-width="990" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4VF6nt-Mi-xKN2HcoPRVee9mUuZQwqBDoNkeylsIEaYq_70bO600eo6DDzUgK4HkAUiX_lwOwMfi-oqpDRoTMF8ouUfmaWLhucKXMufZi_fcDyF-fdPP1X329AAc1Ffz1EZ4F_xidmeeWNeQj48zrltF75sQxAQ85uDJINEojR65tzBzgiwzCD3piu_0u/s320/KILLWORTH-NIGHT%20OF%20KADAR.jpg" width="202" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Garry
Kilworth’s second novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Night of
Kadar</i> was published in 1978.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
a fascinating novel based on the generation starship concept. It begins in the
vast spaceship that had been travelling for a thousand years and is finally nearing
its inhabitable planetary destination. Embryos are activated in their tanks and
grown rapidly, while being educated. Unfortunately, the ship’s designers did
not plan for a subtle minute alien incursion that sabotages the intelligence
units irreparably; ‘One of their manipulative interests was ecology – a natural
area of study for a static race’ (p177).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
ship lands on an island in a sea of quicksand. The enigma of their purpose
remains a mystery, doubtless lost in the wiped tapes. ‘We, the ship’s people.
Born of a machine; an engine. But what is a planet, the planet Earth, if not an
engine, a large beautiful engine that turns in space, and manufactures life?’
(p93).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
main character is Othman, who was born at the age of thirty Earthyears. Others
emerge from the ship, including a pre-programmed wife Silandi. It seems that
about half of the complement of settlers were born mentally impaired, referred
to as morons; this was due to the malfunction in the circuitry. Inevitably,
conflict between individuals arises, causing tension and even rebellion…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
ship automatically constructs tools and machines from its own huge carcass.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
senders, the people who launched the ship were of the Islamic faith; however,
no Koran is supplied and their knowledge is bereft of any religion. As time
goes by, they recall a childhood they never lived but was imprinted: these ‘false
memory’ interludes are detailed in Arabic settings, coloured by the author’s
time living and working in the Middle East. ‘She knew these questions could
only remain questions. Earth could only be the somewhere of her simulated
childhood – a place she had never physically touched’ (p86).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Othman
becomes their natural leader and is determined to search for their destiny,
their reason for being on this planet. To that end, he enforces the
construction of a bridge across the expanse of quicksand to the mainland
beyond. This is not always a popular decision, as the number of the island’s
trees is depleted: ‘Man is an artist at destruction, even though his intentions
may seem pure. Ten, a hundred, a thousand years to grow a tree, and ten minutes
to bring it to the ground’ (p41).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
book’s title is from the Koran: ‘Better is the Night of Kadar (Glory) than a
thousand months…’ ‘On the night of Kadar, the night he died, he would like to
go to those stars, perhaps become one of them’ (p159).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Kilworth’s
prose is always good and often eloquent: ‘the crisp salt of their bodies
mingling as the wetness flows from their skin, the iron in their blood forming
tight wires to jerking muscles, the smell of oxygen burning, circuit fusing in
their veins as they reach out to touch the innumerable corners of the universe’
(p99).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Some
later scenes are quite horrific. For this planet is no Garden of Eden. And yet
they are survivors and they grow as the generations move on. Quite an
imaginative feat, this book.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Editorial comment</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">When
writing, Kilworth could not have imagined that mentioning computer tapes (p3) would
be obsolete so quickly.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">One
of my pet annoyances: ‘Othman first thought privately to himself…’ (p124) ‘thought
privately to himself’ is obsolete.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-71467110810856449322023-10-13T15:43:00.001+00:002023-10-13T15:43:00.139+00:00BATMAN SON OF THE DEMON - Book review<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJJ2pJTWhox3qejZvIY-uVTO36Kfg3-ifUuDi5nB5RH2L1fgnUDl1tZr23cV_Eh54T6jV4Nf7ljplepSFWvyO4W6J4RY0TxIgFzV6yQiVmM9w8PvT9IKWuKb8cTOP2B5SyBFYEuUyicEwq7quyyPPlYFuPa2_i2JldKtMWcuVcWBxyHsDkE9qZ2k7L4uo/s2157/BATMAN%20SON%20OF%20THE%20DEMON.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2157" data-original-width="1615" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJJ2pJTWhox3qejZvIY-uVTO36Kfg3-ifUuDi5nB5RH2L1fgnUDl1tZr23cV_Eh54T6jV4Nf7ljplepSFWvyO4W6J4RY0TxIgFzV6yQiVmM9w8PvT9IKWuKb8cTOP2B5SyBFYEuUyicEwq7quyyPPlYFuPa2_i2JldKtMWcuVcWBxyHsDkE9qZ2k7L4uo/s320/BATMAN%20SON%20OF%20THE%20DEMON.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p>This
78-page graphic novel was published in 1987. Written by Mike W Barr and
illustrated by Jerry Bingham.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
terrorist attack on the Gotham chemical plant is underway. Two hostages have
been taken. This is a job for Batman. There’s an intense fight, and Batman is
wounded. He recovers consciousness in the Bat-cave – with Talia Al Ghul in
attendance. A madman called Qayin needs to be stopped – and Talia’s father R’As
Al Ghul has personal reasons to get involved.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Al Ghuls and Batman join forces and all mayhem is let loose. Talia is a
previous love interest of Bruce Wayne; she knows his secret. Their relationship
becomes strengthened as they begin to track down Qayin and his men.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
are a few amusing if familiar asides, for instance: Bruce insists on donning
his costume even though still recovering from a bullet wound. Talia says, ‘You
can be most exasperating at times.’ And Alfred simply says, ‘Indeed.’ (p16).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Bingham’s
artwork is clean, slick and fast-paced with plenty of action – and explosions! This
is good storytelling in pictures.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A
fine addition to any Batman fan’s collection.</span> </p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-50138563717963405282023-10-12T14:56:00.000+00:002023-10-12T14:56:19.825+00:00LEO THE AFRICAN - Book review<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtrZ8R18s5GSKI7If0hzfIxAuydFg5zT57ltgGlKPDv9arGr8mmuLFKK2ZOQc7xlsx0u83h7D1ov-Mb8yiFMyB9FLGd-hQMjq8FeCVp4yhQ27YktrB2q2jbKbAkwq65eohkhepBlaIYMhTBq3Y43AklvnhdhbNbvXV7g6YEtlcLlR4fK2VyhoEDQJ98zJo/s1534/LEO%20THE%20AFRICAN.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1534" data-original-width="939" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtrZ8R18s5GSKI7If0hzfIxAuydFg5zT57ltgGlKPDv9arGr8mmuLFKK2ZOQc7xlsx0u83h7D1ov-Mb8yiFMyB9FLGd-hQMjq8FeCVp4yhQ27YktrB2q2jbKbAkwq65eohkhepBlaIYMhTBq3Y43AklvnhdhbNbvXV7g6YEtlcLlR4fK2VyhoEDQJ98zJo/s320/LEO%20THE%20AFRICAN.jpg" width="196" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></p>Amin
Maalouf’s </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Leo the African</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> was
published in 1986 and translated into English by Peter Sluglett in 1988. This
paperback copy was published in 1994.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The
book is based on the true-life story of Hasan al-Wazzan, the sixteenth century
traveller and writer who came to be known as Leo Africanus. It is told in the
first person, and covers his first forty years.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He
begins his narration when he was born – not as absurd as it first appears: we’re
privy to second-hand details from his father and mother about their time in Granada
in the late fourteen hundreds. His mother Salma befriends a Jewish pedlar-clairvoyant
and healer, Gaudy Sarah, and ‘began to read my palm like the crumpled page of
an open book’ (p6). Sarah’s prediction – and her elixir of orgeat syrup –
result in Salma’s pregnancy (with Hasan). Sarah also ‘doubled, when necessary, as
midwife, masseuse, hairdresser and plucker of unwanted hair’ (p8).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
days of Islamic Andalusia are numbered. ‘And did not Andalusia flourish in the
days when the vizier Abd al-Rahman used to say jokingly: “O you who cry ‘Hasten
to the prayer!’ You would do better to cry: “Hasten to the bottle!” The Muslims
only became weak when silence, fear and conformity darkened their spirits”.’ (p38).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Arabs were evicted from Spain in 1492, among them the ineffectual ruler Boabdil,
who lingered on the last ridge that afforded him a view of Granada – a place
the Castilians thereafter called ‘The Moor’s last sigh’. It was said that the
fallen sultan had shed tears there, of shame and remorse. ‘You weep like a
woman for the kingdom you did not defend like a man’ (p57). At this time of
expulsion of his family, Hasan was three years old. After eight centuries, no
more would the voice of the muezzin be heard to call the faithful to prayer.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hasan
grew up in Fez, alongside Jews and Christians as well as Muslims. It is during
this time that he learned about the philosophy of life and death: ‘… thank God
for having made us this gift of death, so that life is to have meaning; of
night, that day is to have meaning; silence, that speech is to have meaning;
illness, that health is to have meaning; war, that peace is to have meaning…’ (p103)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hasan’s
friend Harun the Ferret got a job as a porter: ‘Three hundred men, simple,
poor, almost all of the illiterate, but who had nevertheless managed to become
the most respected, most fraternal and best organised of all the guilds of the
city’ (p108). This guild takes care of its members; ‘when any of their number
dies, they take over the responsibility for his family, help his widow to find
a news husband and take care of his children until they are of an age to have a
professions. The son of one is the son of all’ (p108).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
families would hang on the walls of their adopted homes the keys of their homes
they left behind, hoping one day to return to Granada. Hasan was a quick
learner and soon became successful in trading.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">One
of the most powerful men in Fez was the Zarwali, an ex-bandit and murderer who ‘had
built the largest palace in the city, the largest, that is, after that of the
ruler, a piece of elementary common sense for anyone who wanted to make sure
that his head remained attached to his body’ (p131).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Harun
the Ferret had learned about Zarwali’s past and his behaviour. Zarwali was ‘always
convinced that his wives are trying to betray him, particularly the youngest
and most beautiful ones. A denunciation, a slander, an insinuation on the part
of one of her rivals is enough for the poor unfortunate to be strangled. The Zarwali’s
eunuchs then make the crime look like an accident, a drowning, a fatal fall, an
acute tonsillitis…’ (p137). Hasan and the Zarwali will clash – and there will
be dire repercussions…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
are several amusing and even apt sayings scattered about the book, for example:
‘Destiny is more changeable than the skin of a chameleon, as one of the poets
of Denia used to say’ (p57); and ‘If anyone tells you that avarice is the
daughter of necessity, tell him that he is mistaken. It is taxation which has
begotten avarice!’ (p154); and ‘I had become very susceptible to magic and
superstitions… This is probably the fate of rich and powerful men: aware that
their wealth owes less to their merits than to luck, they begin to court the
latter like a mistress and venerate it like an idol’ (p196); and, finally, ‘in
the face of adversity, women bend and men break…’ (p250).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hasan
ventures to Egypt and witnesses the Ottoman conquest there; he is abducted and
becomes a prisoner in Renaissance Rome under the Medicis, and yet remarkably
finds himself being a confidant of the Pope, and converts briefly to Christianity,
and ultimately witnesses the horrendous sack of Rome in 1527.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
book possibly suffers from too much barely digestible religion and politics, yet
these were the driving forces that impelled Hasan to wander.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The
smells, the colours and the feeling for the period are well-conveyed and indeed
instructive for anyone interested in these historic times.</span> </p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-76552999755471092752023-09-27T15:22:00.001+00:002023-09-28T10:28:34.597+00:00Chap O'Keefe rides again!<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Way back in 2014 I interviewed a stalwart of
comic and genre fiction, Keith Chapman. He was an editor and contributor
to various fiction publications in London in the 1960s before moving to New
Zealand and spending nearly 35 years in newspaper and magazine journalism. He
returned to fiction writing in earnest in 1992, using the pen-name Chap
O'Keefe, writing westerns, and also edited the Black Horse Extra online
magazine. Recently he has concentrated on bringing out his quite considerable
back-list in e-book format, rather than producing new fiction.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><u1:p></u1:p></span><span style="background: white;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">Chap O'Keefe, his wife, adult children and grandchildren live
in Auckland, New Zealand. The family home was high on a North Shore hillside
overlooking Hellyer's Creek and the sparkling Waitemata Harbour, </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">but 8 years ago for medical reasons they moved
to a small unit in a retirement village.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Black Horse extra online magazine appeared
quarterly for six years from March 2006. It promoted the western genre and the
work of authors published by the (now defunct) Robert Hale company’s Black Horse
Western hardback novels. You can still read each issue of this magazine here<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.blackhorsewesterns.com/">Black Horse Extra
(blackhorsewesterns.com)</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Keith’s writing history is covered in two lengthy
blog items, featuring among other legendary characters for magazines devoted to
Sexton Blake, Edgar Wallace, and Leslie Charteris’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Saint</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com/2014/02/blog-guest-keith-chapman-aka-chap-okeefe.html">WRITEALOT:
Blog Guest - Keith Chapman aka Chap O'Keefe (nik-writealot.blogspot.com)</a> -</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://nik-writealot.blogspot.com/2014/02/blog-guest-keith-chapman-part-2.html">WRITEALOT:
Blog Guest - Keith Chapman - part 2 (nik-writealot.blogspot.com)</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Some
of Keith’s re-issued westerns as e-books can be found on Amazon and other
platforms:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Rebel and the Heiress<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Frontier Brides<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Blast to Oblivion<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A Gunfight Too Many<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Gunsmoke Night (</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">his first book
written as Chap O’Keefe<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">)</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This
is my review of<i> Blast to Oblivion<o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Inspired
by Conan Doyle’s <i>The Valley of Fear</i>, this twenty-first Black Horse
Western by Chap O’Keefe starts with a bang – a shotgun killing in Denver. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Ex
Pinkerton Joshua Dillard was hired by the deceased’s sister, Flora, to
investigate the murder. She suspected that her brother’s wife was concealing
something – particularly as she had moved away with her male secretary Joseph
Darcy to the mining town of Silverville. When Dillard arrives there, he meets
up with an unusual character with the monicker of Poverty Joe, who happens to
be instrumental in saving Dillard from some desperadoes. Dillard interviewed
the ungrieving widow but couldn’t find any evidence to link her with her
husband’s death. Besides the unwelcome attentions of the desperadoes led by
Cord Skann, Dillard also has to contend with the duplicitous Marshal
Broadstreet.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This
is an enjoyable yarn and it’s clear that the author has written about Joshua
Dillard a number of times (this is his seventh appearance, in fact); the
character fits like a well-worn glove. Subtle evidence of research crops up
from time to time, too. ‘An English lady traveller in the district had recorded
that bad temper and profanity in the presence of women was widespread.’ I could
be wrong, but this may be alluding to Fanny Trollope’s classic ‘Domestic
Manners of the Americans’.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The
action-packed story is laced with humour as well as gunplay. The twist at the
end is neat and it’s satisfying for both the reader – and especially for
Dillard – that Flora is a woman of her word.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">***<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">‘Told
in Pictures’ is an article written by Keith and featured in the prestigious <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Illustrators Quarterly</i> (2013), lavishly
illustrated with covers from Combat Picture Library, Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine
and The Sexton Blake Library, among others.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSE1xP5OJ3so3gUeKENwHryKkOn5edGi5jgdujwv5ATOQ-oxuHo4f4CihMeL4Vlz54lzDKhtIYLpvyqNSP9_7aKzorOGsa00X56s52fU8i5Y4M32FuEP2ZqwLfcuai6NefQFlAuvZa5beOcG45RQcVOhvdwJzgAAdRJj0wi36zAcUrGPCwI8hdzI-S_wqu/s2185/Illustrators%20qtly%20no3.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2185" data-original-width="1650" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSE1xP5OJ3so3gUeKENwHryKkOn5edGi5jgdujwv5ATOQ-oxuHo4f4CihMeL4Vlz54lzDKhtIYLpvyqNSP9_7aKzorOGsa00X56s52fU8i5Y4M32FuEP2ZqwLfcuai6NefQFlAuvZa5beOcG45RQcVOhvdwJzgAAdRJj0wi36zAcUrGPCwI8hdzI-S_wqu/s320/Illustrators%20qtly%20no3.jpg" width="242" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><p></p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2421642745880281653.post-81182420032059951222023-09-26T15:24:00.004+00:002023-09-26T15:24:39.085+00:00THE BURNING BRIDE - Book review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5qvSJiOaDWSlSqRzzuFf4x6lfAZDZNOSeoBUc_B4Zg-lnjYfqtEbskM4QJhZTrGLHU4UGnP8oqmj-JDICT4tkn8ZgaDPYcIiMeyWOvxXD2vQxNEHN69HbsJQp-eBEtZdbqKXgCm5ffMJEHtEKdnZA5JJJtufvqEGmg9XSJGbldBElIqG-9dRIGEwxKVVQ/s1379/Lawrence-3-Burning%20Bride.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1379" data-original-width="854" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5qvSJiOaDWSlSqRzzuFf4x6lfAZDZNOSeoBUc_B4Zg-lnjYfqtEbskM4QJhZTrGLHU4UGnP8oqmj-JDICT4tkn8ZgaDPYcIiMeyWOvxXD2vQxNEHN69HbsJQp-eBEtZdbqKXgCm5ffMJEHtEKdnZA5JJJtufvqEGmg9XSJGbldBElIqG-9dRIGEwxKVVQ/s320/Lawrence-3-Burning%20Bride.jpg" width="198" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Margaret
Lawrence’s final book in her Hannah Trevor historical trilogy, </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The Burning Bride</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">, was published in
1998. I have been remiss in not reading it until now.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
tale takes place between 6 November and 24 December 1786.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Widow
midwife Hannah Trevor has always been an independent soul, even when wed to her
unsavoury husband. So, even though she is pregnant by Daniel Josselyn, Major of
the Continental Army, and a landowner, she is not committed to the betrothal. Yet,
as circumstances begin to crush them all, she relents: ‘If marriage be a bond, I
am ready to bear it. If love be a fire, I am already burnt’ (p269).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Daniel
had once been the friend of Hamilton Siwall, but that was a long while back.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Siwall
is a land merchant, moneylender, magistrate and member of the General Court. When
he tries debtors, he often acquires the offender’s land in settlement,
continually extending his power and prestige. It seems that Siwall is keen to
lay blame on Daniel for the slightest perceived infraction, and it is not long
before the opportunity presents itself.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Marcus
Tapp is the High Sheriff of the county and a creature of Magistrate Siwall. ‘Tapp’s
eyes scanned the yard, missing nothing…Strange eyes, they were, so pale they
seemed in daylight to have no colour at all, glass eyes that the world passed
through without effect, to be recorded by the raw ends of his nerves’ (p23).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">At
this time there is a big issue regarding taxation among the townspeople of Rufford,
Maine: ‘Tax upon tax had been laid on them, debts from a war that set rich men
free to get richer, but ground out all hope from the labouring poor’ (p2). There
are too many debtors; often the prison is bursting at the seams.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘Rich
men elected other rich men and they scratched one another’s backs like sleek
cats and did not understand why poor men resented them, and any who resisted
the growth of their power was labelled as traitors and fools. So it would be
under governors and presidents, as it had been under kings and popes and
caesars’ (p235). Anarchy does not seem too far off…</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Another
of Siwall’s creatures is the town’s local doctor, Samuel Clinch; he is a
drunkard and a misogynist: ‘These country midwives are no more skilled than a
witch with a broomstick, with their pawings and strokings! What does a woman
know of such matters? Can she spell, sir? Can she read and write and cipher Latin
like a man? No, she cannot! Women are soft for our pleasures, but they ain’t
got the brains of a sheep where Science and babies is concerned!’ (p128). As
implied, he is not averse to taking payment for his doctoring of female patients
with pleasures of the flesh. Until, that is, he is found murdered in the
forest. A mystery surrounds the violent death.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">For
different reasons, both Siwall and Tapp soon accuse Daniel of the murder,
though there is little conclusive proof.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hannah
is kept busy with her midwife role. ‘It was always there at a borning, the
spectre of dying, the other side of the treacherous coin of hope’ (p335). Yet,
in reality, she would prefer to spend her time quilting and finally preparing
for her wedding to Daniel. Several quilt patterns are named throughout the book:
Bridges Burning, China Dish, Cross and Crown, Cradle in the Wilderness, Flame in
the Forest, and Star of the Forest. Instead, she finds herself puzzling over the
unpleasant doctor’s murder. That is, when she is not laying out the men who’d
been sentenced to death by the loathed magistrate.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘This
is her work in the world, to reconcile living and dying. To wash away fear and
shame and loneliness with a touch the dead must somehow feel where they stand
watching, invisible, behind their window of clouded glass’ (p244).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Again,
we meet Hannah’s deaf mute daughter Jennet, always depicted with compassion and
eloquence. As before, Lawrence’s prose and imagery suck you into the story, and
into the period:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">‘A
woodpecker rattled in the crown of an oak tree, and a flock of kinglets
chattered as they flew from one tree to another, their scarlet crowns a flash
of fire against the heavy hung branches. And now and then a limb creaked with
the weight of slowly melting ice, and a burden of wet snow fell with a plop to
the ground…’ (p398)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Here
you will find poignancy, cruelty, anger, despair, injustice, love, hate, suspense,
and tension aplenty.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A
fitting end to an engrossing historical series.</span> </p>Nik Mortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10060923673065456386noreply@blogger.com0