ERUPTION - Book review

Michael Crichton and James Patterson’s Eruption was published in 2024. Crichton died in 2008 and left an unfinished manuscript plus many notes and research details which the ubiquitous Patterson completed and shaped into this novel. 

After a prologue set in Hawaii in 2016, we move to the near-future, April 2025. All the signs are that an enormous eruption of the volcano Mauna Loa is imminent, within a week! ‘If you measure Mauna Loa from its base on the ocean floor, it is almost six miles high – more than three miles underwater, two and a half miles above... largest geographical feature on this planet’ (p69). Its 1994 eruption produced enough lava to bury Manhattan to a depth of 30ft.

John (Mac) MacGregor was a geologist who headed the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. He has a dedicated team who help monitor the area. There is a second slightly smaller volcano called Mauna Kea that dominates the nearby US Military Reserve. Mac’s main concern is the safety of the major town, Hilo that potentially could be in the path of any eruption’s lava-flow or pyroclastic cloud. Then he learns some staggering information that threatens not only the island but the world if the eruption is not diverted.

Patterson’s tendency to use short chapters ramps up the tension and keeps the pages turning. Inevitably, there’s a lot of technical stuff, but it works. We also get to learn how many lives volcanoes have claimed over the years – not only those people caught in the eruptions, but those studying and investigating the natural phenomena. There’s a helpful map of the Hawaiian islands and 109 chapters.

It’s a blast.

PS: There's a US officer in the story called Morton. Fancy that...

Writing - Gestation of a thriller

Some writers believe that all those piles of writing ideas that had not been translated into either short stories or books should be ditched. There’s sense in that – tidying up, clearing the wheat from the chaff.

However, some ideas require time to gestate and may be worth holding onto - for years. I have several examples of retaining ideas that have ultimately paid dividends; here’s one.

When I was training in the RN in 1971, our group spent an evening round the mess table and set up a Ouija session, using a tumbler and placed in a circle pieces of paper with the alphabet and numbers on them. Needless to say, despite our best efforts, nothing intelligible resulted. Then I proposed that the gobbledegook was in code. And an idea formed. The message would be transmitted by a psychic spy, Tana Standish.

But, in the final analysis, it didn’t seem to be gibberish.

By the time Keith Tyson deciphered the first paragraph, he felt sick inside.

Unsmiling narrow mouth beneath a salt-and-pepper moustache, Jock stubbed out half-smoked cigarettes repeatedly. He was a bag of nerves since his last mission. It was plain on his face that he knew this astral message was very bad.

At last Tyson put down the pencil and raised his grey eyes. His expression was solemn. “It’s from Tana,” he said. “They’ve got her.”

Alan Swann’s face lost most of its colour as he leaned forward. He queried softly, “Where?”

“Czechoslovakia.” (p174)

That was the set-up. So I wrote a 2,000-word short story entitled ‘The Ouija Message’. Even though by then I’d sold a number of action-adventure stories, this one didn’t find a home. In retrospect, I realised that the story needed more space. I embarked on writing a book – same title – and it stretched to a modest 50,000 words.

At that time (1974) publishers were not averse to commenting on submissions. Robert Hale was not keen on the psychic elements but said ‘the work is up to publication standard and indeed better than many that are published’. So that was encouraging. Alas, a good number of rejections of Ouija followed and time passed and life-work tended to get in the way. I continued to have reasonable successes with short story and article sales, and wrote other books, thrillers and fantasy, but didn’t sell any of those novels either.

Time passed. As it does. Then, in 2007 I dug out a one-line idea – ‘He was dressed entirely in black. Black because he was in mourning. Mourning the men he had killed.’ I decided to write a western! That same year I sold the resultant book to Hale, and five more followed before they went out of business. At the same time, I had success with the Harry Bowling Prize, winning an award with the first chapters of a crime novel. While, sadly, I didn’t get agent representation, the success spurred me on to finish that crime book and it was accepted by a new publisher, Libros, under the title Pain Wears No Mask; (Libros went out of business but now the book is available as The Bread of Tears). On the back of these two successes, I revisited The Ouija Message and, thanks to all those years of writing experience, vastly improved the book to the extent that it ran to 80,000 words and it was accepted by Libros in 2008. That book spawned two more adventures and I’m busy writing the fourth in the Tana Standish psychic spy series. Since my breakthrough in 2007 I’ve had 37 books published.

The moral of all this? Never give up on your writing ideas. Believe in yourself. And if you keep writing, you keep improving.

 

Note: The Tana Standish books are: Mission: Prague (Czechoslovakia, 1975); Mission: Tehran (Iran, 1978); Mission: Khyber (Afghanistan, 1979); Mission: Falklands (Argentina, 1982) – work in progress.

GREEK FIRE - Book review

 

Winston Graham’s Greek Fire was published in1957 and was one of several of his early suspense novels re-issued in the 1970s in response to his success with the Poldark series (my copy is dated 1974).

American Gene Vanbrugh is a post-war publisher visiting Athens, Greece. He has a history of fighting with the partisans during the war. ‘You have sad eyes, M. Vanbrugh – as if they have sen many things they would like to forget. But I think you are a man of honour’ (p58).

In the cellar night club The Little Jockey he is watching several people at their tables, including Anya Stonaris who is accompanied by the politician Manos. Anya is the mistress of politician Georg Lascou. There is an election due soon. Politics is dangerous, and there is the post-war grievances and pressure from Communist outfits.

The cabaret is Spanish: ‘Here was some inner truth from Spain stated in terms of the dance, an allegorical picture of the relationship of the sexes, spiritual more than physical but partly both, a statement of a racial anomaly which had existed for two thousand years’ (p11).

One of Vanbrugh’s contacts is a woman he knew during the war, Mme Lindos: ‘There are certain architectures of forehead and nose and cheek-bone which defy the erosions of age. She had them’ (p20). She will prove useful to Gene as things go awry.

One of the Spanish troupe is the victim of a hit-and-run. The police consider it is an accident but the man’s wife Maria thinks differently and enlists Gene’s help. These Spanish performers seem to be linked in some manner with Lascou.

Gene is not a fan of Lascou. ‘I’ve seen Communism at work. I’ve seen the cold mass slaughter, the children dying, the brutality to women, the absolute ruthless callousness in gaining one set objective. Above all, I’ve seen the lies – so that no words have any meaning any more. Nothing that’s worth living for has any meaning any more…  That’s what I want. Just to stop you.’ (p119).

Strange, how times haven’t changed – the lies and double-speak are still with us, though not merely spouted by avowed communists.

There’s quite a lot of Greek politics of the period, not particularly pertinent now, but that does not detract from a page-turning suspense novel with strong characterisation, a hint of romance and a haunting manhunt:

‘A hunted man is like a man at the centre of a cyclone; there are periods of calm when it’s impossible for him to assess the strength of the storm around him’ (p190).

Recommended.

GARDEN OF BEASTS - Book review

 

 

Jeffery Deaver’s standalone book – ‘A novel of Berlin 1936’ - was published in 2004 and it’s an interesting departure from his normal suspense psychological thrillers.

Paul Schumann is a mobster hitman who only kills those who deserve to die. ‘Committing an evil act to eliminate a greater evil’ (p93). Unfortunately his latest hit goes wrong and he is caught and given a choice: he can go to Berlin and kill Ernst, one of Hitler’s top men responsible for rearmament, or opt for the electric chair. A no-brainer.

Once in Berlin, however, things go awry and he is being hunted by a dogged Berlin Kripo detective Kohl. The depth of detail for the period is very impressive and never swamps the story.

Paul learns a great deal about the new Germany under Hitler who took power a mere three years earlier.  The SS ‘were originally Hitler’s guard detail. Now they’re another private army. The Gestapo is the secret police force, plainclothes. They’re small in number but very dangerous. Their jurisdiction is political crimes mostly. But in Germany now anything can be a political crime. You spit on the sidewalk, it’s an offense to the honor of the Leader so off you go to prison or a concentration camp.’ (p79)

Interior Minister Göring ‘ordered every policeman to carry a weapon to use them liberally. He’d
actually issued an edict saying that a policeman should be reprimanded for failing to shoot a suspect, but not for shooting someone who turned out to be innocent.’ (p84)

Kohl and his fellow policemen found it difficult to do their jobs particularly when interviewing potential witnesses: ‘since Hitler had come to power blindness had become the national malady…’ (p89)

Paul befriends his landlady Käthe and she tells him about her boyfriend who was brutally murdered by National Socialists in front of her near the lake in the Tiergarten, the Garden of Beasts. Just one more piece of evidence against the evil regime.

Deaver creates characters you sympathise with and believe in and fear for their safety in the treacherous state of the Third Reich. The claustrophobic environment, where children will betray parents to the authorities, where jobs, livelihoods and even lives could be forfeit if you don’t acquiesce, where freedom of speech is trampled upon: it must have been terrible to live there then. (Imagine how bad it could have been with the social media trolls and cancel brigade!)

A riveting page-turning thriller with a couple of neat twists – Deaver’s hallmark – and a satisfying resolution.

Recommended.

THE LAST ONE LEFT - book review

It’s a long time since I read a John D. MacDonald novel. This one was first published in 1967; my edition is the 2014 Random House copy, recently purchased. Amusingly, MacDonald dedicated the novel ‘to Travis McGee who lent invaluable support and encouragement’.

It begins and also ends with the boating couple Howard and June Prowt off the Gold Coast off Florida. Anyone who has read MacDonald will be familiar with his knowledge of sailing craft, which shows in his description of both the vessel and the state of the sea. They thought they saw a boat adrift but were unable to go alongside and then it was gone.

Staniker has survived an explosion at sea; he’d been hired to captain the boat for the Kayd family. He’s the last one left, the rest of the passengers have perished. He is being nursed back to health.

Sam Boylston, a Texas lawyer, is mourning the death of his sister Leila – she was one of the passengers on the Kayd vessel.  Leila’s husband Jonathan was convinced she was alive and planned a hair-brained search for her in the vast ocean.

Chrissie Harkinson is pleased to bed the young boat boy Oliver for she has a use for him. She also knows Staniker so naturally she visits him, just to see how he’s doing…

And so begins a convoluted but easy to follow plot that is pure MacDonald. His descriptions of characters, minor and major, and the locales are spot on, as ever. Oh, yes, indeed, there’s certainly something not right. There’s the question of a considerable amount of cash involved which might be missing… There’s also a beautiful Cuban maid with an interesting back-story, and she is involved with Raoul Kelly, an investigative reporter.

The characters are set up, the plot is unfolding and it all falls into place. And as you’d expect with one of John D.’s mystery thrillers there are murders and betrayals.

Loved it. Good to reacquaint myself with you, John D. You might have died in 1986, aged seventy, but you still excite your readers three decades later.

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL - Book review

The University: Book One by Terrence McCauley is like it says on the cover, a fast-paced thriller. Highly original too.

Way back in the early 1970s there was a sci-fi detective series called Probe starring Hugh O’Brian as agent Hugh Lockwood. The series concerns the so-called World Securities Corporation, a high-tech international private investigation company that employs field operatives—the elite of whom are aided by implanted audio receivers and who carry Scanners, tiny video camera/telemetry units which can be attached to tie clips or other jewellery. The most common method is to wear the Scanner on a ring, enabling it to be discreetly aimed. Two other agents Tony Franciosa and Doug McClure. They’re in constant contact with the probe technical staff. At the time I thought this was great stuff.

Now move to the present and we have an agency that is ten or even a hundred times better than depicted in Probe. The University is a non-government intelligence network. OMNI – the Optimized Mechanical and Network Integration protocol – was now far-reaching, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence and satellite assets.

Heading The University is the Dean.

One of the Office Heads is James Hicks; he’s ex-special services and knows how to handle himself. He has worked for the Dean for almost two years but had never met him.

Hicks has access to the OMNI satellite feeds, able to spy on and listen to suspects and enemies alike. And of course OMNI can perform instant translation of languages overheard. Omniscient, indeed.

Hicks also has access to all kinds of useful people, one of whom is Roger, who is a master at interrogation. Quite a chilling creation, is our Roger.

For this latest mission Hicks is thrown by the fact that an asset has seemingly been turned against the University. Many of the assets he recruited were unsavoury men and women, but they all had something in common: they could be useful when called upon for certain tasks required by The University. In fact, as Hicks observed, ‘They’d all done things that had opened themselves to University pressure and blackmail. Any dirt he had on them was their own fault. He’d sooner have sympathy for the devil himself than for any of his potential recruits’ (p8)

There is plenty of non-stop action throughout so that the 323 pages sped by. This could become an addictive series.

Although this is a contained story, it leaves the reader wanting more – and happily there is more. Book Two is A Murder of Crows. Two other books follow... so far.

PAST TENSE - Book review

PAST TENSE

Lee Child

The 24^th Jack Reacher book, published 2018.  By chance, Reacher winds up in a small town called Laconia in New Hampshire. It was where his father was born. He decided to find the old place.  Not so easy. He gets the help of blonde detective Brenda Amos, but tracking down his father proves difficult.

Unconnected, a young Canadian couple get stranded at a lonely motel in the middle of nowhere – well, not too far from Laconia. The couple, Patty and Shorty, are being toyed with by the owners of the motel – but to what end? Was this a variation of the movie Vacancy? No, something else entirely; but just as suspenseful.

Inevitably, the two strands will entwine and when they do, blood will be spilled in true Reacher style.

For a brief while I thought Mr Child was coincidentally using a plot from my latest book Rogue Prey, which is seeking an agent or publisher; but happily there’s only a vague similarity.

This is a slow burn of a book with a satisfying ending.

THE ALPHA LIST - Book review

 THE ALPHA LIST

 

Ted Allbeury served as an officer in the Intelligence Corps, working on SOE counter-intelligence, so his espionage books have the ring of authenticity. During the Cold War he was captured and tortured when running agents across the border between East and West Germany, and he hints at this on p75:

‘Laker had been killed in Oslo by a KGB operator a couple of years ago. Laker ran a line-crossing operation across the Finnish frontier into the USSR. He had lasted about eight months which was the equivalent of three score years and ten in that part of the world doing that particular job… Laker had been a survivor from a previous line-crossing network and ought to have been pulled out…’

The Alpha List was published in 1979. It’s a first-person narrative by agent Dave Marsh, who has been tasked with investigating an old friend, a Labour MP, Charlie Kelly, who is suspected of passing information to the Soviets. There’s talk of an Alpha List, which could be significant, but Charlie won’t disclose any details.

It’s fascinating how we get to know these two men growing up in post-war England, and how their politics and idealism change them.

Marsh is involved in a game of cat-and-mouse not only with his own people but also the Russians. The truth that is finally revealed to Marsh is devastating.

This was written when the Soviet Union was a powerful protagonist, before it was broken up. When the UK, not Europe, was in effect the front line against Soviet aggression. Would the United States have risked a Third World War if the USSR had attacked the UK?

Some of Allbeury’s books have downbeat endings; be warned, this is one of them.

THE SECOND SON - Book review

THE SECOND SON

Charles Sailor

Published in 1979, it has taken me forty years to get round to reading this challenging and excellent novel on my bookshelf.

Friendly, helpful charitable construction worker Joseph Turner is working on a 24-storey skyscraper when he saves the life of a friend, but in so doing falls to certain death. Miraculously, he survives the fall and thereafter he has to come to terms with his new-found powers, including his ability to heal. Within a short while he has an immense following. Joe realises that he cannot single-handedly help everyone. He asks people to find their own inner strength and to help themselves. A mixed message, at best.

The Pope seems to accept the possibility that Joe might be a – or the – Messiah, but others in Rome are not so sure. Powers in Rome and in Washington DC see Joe as a threat and a hired killer is despatched to deal with Joe.

A riveting story (no pun intended) that poses the question: What would we do if a new Messiah did walk among us? There are several poignant moments and heartfelt grief. Joe made a difference. Maybe that is all any of us can ask.

It was optioned as a movie but it was never made.