UNCOMMON DANGER - Book review

Eric Ambler’s second thriller Uncommon Danger was published in 1937 (though my Fontana paperback shows the copyright as 1941...). 

The story begins with a Prologue at a board meeting of the Pan-Eurasian Petroleum Company in London. There are concerns about the renewal of oil concessions in Roumania. Bessarabia has been a contested area between Russia and Roumania since the Great War, mainly due its vital oil fields. ‘The party’s policy is a familiar one – anti-Semitism, a corporate state, an alliance with Germany, and the “saving of Roumania from the Jewish and Communist menace”’ (p123). The company chairman has a solution – it involved recruiting a certain Colonel Robinson to set things straight. ‘It was the power of Business, not the deliberations of statesmen that shaped the destinies of nations’ (p87).

Russian double-agent Borovansky has stolen Russian plans for a possible attack on Bessarabia, which, if made public, will generate anti-Russian feeling in Roumania and bring the Fascist Iron Guard to power who will then make an alliance with Nazi Germany. Incognito, Borovansky boards a train...

Meanwhile, Russian spies Andreas Zaleshoff and his sister Tamara are tipped off and commission a Spaniard, Ortega, to pursue Borovansky on the train, follow him to his hotel in Austria, and get the plans back.

Freelance journalist Desmond Kenton has had a bad run of luck gambling and boards the same train on his way to find a pal in Vienna who might supply him with funds. He meets a Mr Sachs. Kenton’s money troubles seem resolved when Mr Sachs asks him to deliver some papers across the Austrian border, paying handsomely – and then Kenton’s troubles begin!

An amateur hero out of his depth, Kenton discovers a dead body, is hunted as the murderer, and joins up with the two Russian spies in an attempt to obtain the incriminating plans/photos and clear his name.

In the process, Kenton is captured by Colonel Robinson (in actual fact assassin-for-hire Saridza). ‘You see, your business man desires the end, but dislikes the means... That is why Saridza is necessary... there is always dirty work to be done... and he and his kind are there to do it, with large fees in their pockets and the most evasive instructions imaginable’ (p121).

Boldly, Kenton tells Saridza, ‘It’s not just a struggle between Fascism and Communism, or between any other “-isms”. It’s between the free human spirit and the stupid, fumbling, brutish forces of the primeval swamp – and that, Colonel, means you and your kind’ (p84)

It’s a fast-paced adventure with Zaleshoff and his sister Tamara providing mystery and tension, while the villains are truly villainous.

Another excellent Fontana paperback cover

THE ENGLISH LADY - book review

William Harrington’s Second World War espionage novel The English Lady was published in 1982. It comprises three parts: 1931-1934; 1938-1940; and 1941-1942 (though the final pages are 1981).

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.

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...

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).

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.

Haydrich observed ‘We have to prepare for war. To save the peace, you prepare for war’ (p183).

A phrase handed down from the fourth century Romans, perhaps: si vis pacem, para bellum. Interestingly, part of this was used as a motto by a German arms maker – parabellum guns and cartridges.

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.

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.

Certain events are touched upon, notably Kristallnacht – 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.

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.

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. 

Widowland - Book review

C.J. Carey’s debut novel Widowland joins the lengthy ranks of alternate history books, in this case re-imagining where Britain signed an alliance with Nazi Germany in 1940. The story takes place in 1953, in the weeks running up to the coronation of Edward VIII and his queen Wallis. Since the Alliance, in effect all power actually resides in Alfred Rosenberg, Britain’s Protector.

In this new world, women are allocated specific castes. ‘When all the boxes were ticked, the women were assigned the classification… This label would determine every aspect of their life, from where they should live, to what clothes they would wear, what entertainment they could enjoy and how many calories they could consume.’ (p20)

The elite women were popularly called Gelis; Klaras were fertile women who had produced four or more children; Lenis were professional women, such as office workers. Paulas were carers, teachers and nurses; Magdas were lowly shop and factory employees, while Gretls did domestic work. Tight at the bottom came Friedas – essentially cemetery women – ‘widows and spinsters over fifty who had no children,  no reproductive purpose and who did not serve a man.’ (p20)

Rose Ransom is among the elite, a Geli, working at the Ministry of Culture, rewriting classics of English literature to correct the views expressed in these old novels. ‘They had an office for everything and there was no reason why literature should no be processed and cultivated and bureaucratized as much as steel or cardboard or coal.’ (p141)

Inevitably, reading the forbidden texts in order to prune them has its effect: ‘she found she could not get the writers’ voices out of her head.’ (p206) – which is why despots always desire to control writing in their world.

As she’s an expert in these old tomes, she is called upon to investigate outbreaks of insurgency: graffiti has been daubed on public buildings in the form of extracts from forbidden works, notably words by female novelists. Suspicion has fallen on Widowland, the run-down slum in Oxford where childless women over fifty have been banished. Rose is tasked with rooting out the source of this rebellion before the Leader, Hitler, arrives in England for the Coronation.

Some quotations are from Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, others from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and even Jane Austen.

Carey has captured the flavour of the early 1950s as well as the machinations of the Third Reich with many telling details. She also imbues the story with wit and humour as well as menace and suspense. She has an easy but often haunting style, too: ‘A hawthorn in full bloom had scattered its blossom like blown snow across her path and its musty odour evoked a sudden evanescent transport of memory…’ (p158)

‘Short of being German, Helena had been gifted with all the blessings the gods could bestow, chief among them a sense of the ridiculous – a vital attribute in Government service.’ (p16)

‘Alfred Rosenberg was sixty, but looked a decade more. With his sickly complexion, perpetual scowl and deep-set dark eyes, the Protector was more mortician than politician.’ (p34)

Hymns were still sung in community centres, though the words had been changed: ‘The Magda in her kitchen/ The Gretl at the grate/The Leader made them lowly/And ordered their estate.’ (p154)

A German policeman Bruno Schumacher is wonderfully described: ‘… he had a five o’clock shadow that looked like it had no regard for punctuality.’ (p171)

To compound Rose’s situation, she is conducting an illicit affair with Martin, a powerful Nazi commander, which adds suspense to the brew.

In many ways this novel offers a few chilling insights into the ongoing culture wars and the cancellation mentality, among them digs at the purveyors of the Woke religion: ‘Don’t presume to speculate on other cultures. “Cultural Misappropriation” it was called…’ (p195)  In addition it seems likely that the repercussions of Covid-19 and subsequent Lockdowns and Government rulings inspired aspects of the novel: ‘Self-censorship was always more effective than any other kind. Why police people when you can scare them into policing themselves?’ (p315)

The subjugation of women depicted here has faint echoes of The Handmaid’s Tale (Attwood, 1985), but without the religious overtones. Some other alternate history books are Bring the Jubilee (Moore, 1955), The Man in the High Castle (Dick, 1962), Pavane (Roberts, 1968), Dominion (Sansom, 2012), A Piece of Resistance (Egleton, 1970), Collaborator (Davies, 2003), Fatherland (Harris, 1992), When the Kissing had to Stop (Fitzgibbon, 1960), SSGB (Deighton, 1978), The Leader (Walters, 2003) and Romanitas (McDougall, 2005). Widowland is a welcome addition to an impressive list.

C.J. Carey is the pen-name of novelist Jane Thynne; she is the widow of author Philip Kerr. This is her first novel using this pseudonym.

***

Editorial comment:

I thought the cover was garish; however, the author liked it immensely, so who am I to judge?

‘If that’s not nerve-wracking enough’. (p17) Wrack is seaweed. It should be ‘nerve-racking’. Nerves on the rack, in effect.

THE RUNNER - Book review

 

Christopher Reich’s period thriller has the strapline ‘Fatherland meets The Day of the Jackal in the thriller of the year.’ For a change, the publicity isn’t an exaggeration. It’s only taken me 21 years to get round to reading this one, just sitting on the shelf waiting; it was published in 2000.

It’s July 1945 and the war is over. Erich Seyss, who had been an accomplished runner in the 1936 Olympics is a captured SS officer in a POW camp awaiting trial by the War Crimes Commission – until he boldly escapes.

Devlin Judge, a lawyer with the International Military Tribunal learns of the escape shortly after finding out that Seyss was responsible for his brother Francis’s murder along with other American soldiers, all massacred in cold blood at Malmedy. Judge requests seven days’ leave to hunt down Seyss.

On a couple of occasions he comes close to catching his man, but the ex-SS officer is too quick, too fleet of foot to be trapped. During the hunt, Judge suspects that there is a conspiracy at the heart of the American military hierarchy that could pitch Europe into another deadly conflict. Of relevance to the allusion of The Day of the Jackal is the Potsdam Conference which was held in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945. The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, represented respectively by Premier Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, and President Harry S. Truman…

One of Judge’s contacts happens to be Ingrid, one-time lover and jilted fiancé of Seyss. She too gets sucked into the gripping quest in which it is sometimes difficult to determine friend from foe.

Reich tells his tale with masses of period detail, plenty of action, in an authoritative style that makes the story believable. The descriptions of a bomb-blasted Berlin and the scrabbling survivors living from hand-to-mouth put the reader there. There is some clever blending of fact with lashings of fiction. He has a good turn of phrase, too: ‘She smiled, and the smile was like the first crack in a pane of glass. She could feel the fissure splintering inside of her, its veins shooting off in every direction. It was only a matter of time until she shattered.’ (p456)

The publisher of the paperback (Hodder Headline) excelled here, not only showing the runner on the front cover resembling the swastika, but also having inserted at the bottom of each page the silhouette of a runner in different poses; if you flick the pages from the beginning of the book to the end, you will see the silhouetted figure running from left to right. (see below) Neat.

 

 

Book review - The Pale Criminal

‘It didn’t need much explaining. That’s the thing about being a detective: I catch on real fast.’ (p272)

Philip Kerr’s second Bernie Gunther novel The Pale Criminal was published in 1990. 

I read the first, March Violets (1989) in January 2016. [Glowing review here]

I ended that review by saying I was looking forward to reading #2 ‘soon’. So much for ‘soon’…! To reiterate, it’s most remiss of me to only be reading these books at this late juncture, when they’ve been on my shelf for quarter of a century!

Kerr exploded on the crime book scene with March Violets and has consistently produced best seller after best seller – to date there are 12 novels in this series; he has written standalone books too. He’s popular because he inhabits his character, a typical private eye with a wise-cracking jaundiced view of the world. But these books are more than PI novels; they’re set in Berlin before and after the Second World War. An inspired choice: Berlin is almost a living breathing character in itself. The research and detail - without being overdone - provide believability.

March Violets was set at the time of the Berlin Olympics, 1936. The Pale Criminal jumps to 1938 (for an historical reason).

Gunther used to work in the police but has since gone private.

‘My business doesn’t exactly suit those who are disposed to be neat. Being a private investigator leaves you holding more loose ends than a blind carpet-weaver.’ (p246)

Obergruppenfuhrer Heydrich tends to use Gunther from time to time and this second foray is no exception. Ironically, Heydrich has got wind of secret plans for a pogrom against the Jews; he’s more concerned about the cost to German insurance companies than the fate of the citizens of that race, so he wants Gunther to stymie the plot.

Meanwhile, Gunther is investigating the brutal murders of Aryan girls; not for the squeamish. There’s a definite link, it seems between the deaths and the pogrom plot.

Taut and gripping, and steeped in period detail, the book races along. Complete with repulsive and intriguing characters:

‘Certainly time had stood still with his prognathous features – somewhere around one million years BC. Tanker could not have looked less civilized than if he had been wearing the skin of a sabre-toothed tiger.’ (p117)

And the plot neatly chimes with a terrible real historic event.

The book title fittingly comes from a phrase in a Nietzsche quotation.

Excellent.

[Interestingly, the third book in the series is set in 1947. Some other later books jump back to the early 1940s. I’m not sure which way to jump in reading more – go for the publishing sequence or the chronological timeline. It probably doesn’t matter.]

Book review - Legacy

Legacy is James Steel’s second book, published in 2010.  His first, December (2009) and his third Warlord (2011) were well received; since then he has only produced one book, a fantasy (2013).

The cover and blurb are misleading, but that’s not the author’s fault: Nazis do figure in the story, but in the past; the Manchester Evening News view that Steel is ‘a new contender to the crown of spy thriller supremo’ is misplaced for this book, though it might be appropriate for December.

Legacy is interesting, though flawed.

There are three narrative strands.

1) Germany, 1520s, concerning knight Eberhardt von Stelzenberg, who miraculously survives the Knights War and the Peasants’ War; he is convinced there is truth in the Dark Heart Prophecy that will destroy Germany.

2) Germany, 1941, concerning SS Major Otto Hofheim, whose heart is dark. He is tasked with by Himmler with seeking out the Dark Heart in Africa, a weapon hinted at in the writings of Eberhardt.

3) England,/Africa/Germany, the present (2010), concerning Alex Devereux, former cavalry major and now a hardened mercenary, hired by the mysterious Kalil to capture a diamond mine in the Central African Republic.

Each scene change/time-change should be indicated consistently, but this is not the case; some shifts are, others are not, which can momentarily cause confusion in the reader.

While Eberhardt’s story is of interest, it is clear that it has been shoehorned into this ostensible thriller because the author was fascinated by the characters and the period. In fact, apart from the vague reference in the old knight’s writings, it has no relevance to the other two story strands and could have been dispensed with entirely.

The Nazi Otto is brave, a man who leads from the front and has earned his men’s approbation in conflict. However, he is an unpleasant character with no redeeming features. His brief love affair with an ally, an Arab woman, cannot gloss over his blood-soaked history. His quest into the African jungle proved fruitless and the narrative seemed rushed.  There is a twist, linking Devereux and Otto, but it wasn’t a surprise.

At least Alex Devereux is in the mould of a modern hero. Though he feels he has to prove himself. He is bold and businesslike, getting the project off the ground. Yet he comes across as emotionless; when two of his comrades are killed in the onslaught against the mine, he is elated at their success but doesn’t spare a thought for those deaths.

The final revelation concerning the ‘prophecy’ is a disappointment. The blurb ‘A medieval prophecy with the power to change the world’ is pure hokum; don’t blame the author, though, blame the publicists and editors.

The book would have benefitted from a better editor; there are too many echo words close to each other. And characters ‘think to themselves’…!  And the time-change headings should have been consistent, as stated.

The history, the character sketches, the military hardware, all appear to be authentic, however, and the book has a few suspenseful moments and has pace in parts, which redeem the author.

Book review - Lohengrin

Antony Melville Ross’s ninth book Lohengrin (1986) is a spy thriller set during the Second World War. It’s a tense and believable read but has been out of print for some time, which is a pity as it’s a competent suspenseful story about the incredible yet true Double-Cross System, when the British security service actively ran and controlled the German espionage system in the UK.

We’re introduced to the highly attractive Claire Helier who is ‘a favourite of London society and an orphaned daughter of an ancient house.’ She is recruited into MI5’s ‘Beautiful Bitch Brigade’ who helped suborn identified German spies. Her target is Frank Pelham, a man who has been allocated the codename Lohengrin. Claire’s controller is George Pemberton, whose earlier turned German agent, Parsifal, had committed suicide due to the pressure.

Claire and the security service entrap Frank, playing on his emotions. It isn’t hard for Claire, because she fell in love with him. That was an uncalled for complication. But while she loved Frank, she hid her duplicity, and he was convinced that if he didn’t cooperate with the security service Claire would be hanged. The psychological submission and attempted rebuilding of Frank is plainly detailed, and could be construed as shameful, yet in this case, as with others in a similar situation, the end justified the means. Most nights London and elsewhere was bombed. Life went on, but few knew if it might be snuffed out in an instant. The XX system was an ingenious and essential way to fight back.

At one point the daring manipulators send Pemberton with Lohengrin to Portugal and thence to Berlin. Ostensibly, Pemberton was offering to be a double agent for the Germans. This is tense stuff; he is interviewed by Admiral Canaris, among others, and treated to watch an entertainment – two Nazi women whipping a naked black marketer to within an inch of his life. The audience is in raptures over it; while Pemberton later is violently sick, wondering if a similar fate awaits him: ‘Pemberton took his second shower of the night, spending ten minutes under it as though disgust was a material thing he could cleanse from his body.’ (p239)

The narrative is tense and suspenseful, laced with humour and good observation for the period. ‘May I have the boiled mutton without spinach, please? I know that spinach is good for you, but I’ve always hated it and as I don’t want muscles like Popeye it would be a waste.’ (p185)

The subtext is about trust, honesty and being true to oneself.

The German viewpoint is touched upon. Despite being ignorant of the deception, they were circumspect: ‘We have learnt to suspect anything put out over the BBC, but the British press is a different matter. It can have a “D” Notice forbidding publication applied to it, but I doubt there is the machinery to enforce the printing of misleading information. Their reporters are too curious and freedom of the press still means a great deal to the British, even in time of war. It’s almost an article of faith with them.’ (p183)

The ending is perhaps inevitably downbeat. Maybe this accounts for the book being all-but forgotten. The title might not have helped sales either. Of the ten books by Melville Ross, seven are one word titles.

In the 1980s he was a respected author of tense thrillers. He called upon his experience in WWII in command of his own submarine, was awarded the DSC, and worked in the Secret Service after the war. He evokes a powerful feeling for his characters, whichever side they’re on.  I’m certainly inclined to look up his other books.

Blindfold (1978)

Two Faces of Nemesis (1979)

Back Lash (1979)

Tightrope (1981)

Submarine quartet

Trigger (1982)

Talon (1983)

Shadow (1984)

Command (1985)

Shaw’s War (1988)

Antony Melville Ross died in 1993, aged 73.