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.

REMINISCENCES - A VISIT TO SOUTH GEORGIA

In May 1985 I was fortunate to be onboard HMS Diomede when we visited the Falklands and the island of South Georgia. This is an article I wrote at the time about the experience.

South Georgia was discovered by Europeans in 1675.

Captain James Cook in HMS Resolution made the first landing, survey and mapping; in 1775 he took possession for Britain and named it Isle of Georgia after King George III. It is about 800 miles east-south-east of the Falklands and covers an area of 1450 square miles. It is rugged, mountainous and an inhospitable island which, for almost the whole year, is covered in deep snow with many glaciers (the glaciers move eighteen feet in a day, where Norwegian glaciers move that distance in a year!) It is virtually impossible for movement on foot beyond the immediate vicinity of the long-abandoned whaling stations of Grytviken, Leith, Stromness, Husvik and Prince Olav. The scenery is spectacular and the many glaciers which come right down to the sea are a photographer’s dream, with remarkable sunsets adding both colour and beauty. The weather, however, remains a permanent enemy, with gale force winds and complete white-outs occurring frequently, unpredictably and alarmingly quickly – as SAS troops discovered during an attempt to retake the island in April 1982.

The population used to comprise only the staff of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) station at King Edward Point, numbering about twelve in winter and twenty-two in summer. There is also a small BAS team of three biologists and a technician on Bird Island, situated off the north-western corner of South Georgia.

Sealing started in 1790 and was actively pursued between 1795 and 1802 and again between 1814 and 1820. Captain James Weddell estimated in 1825 the total number of skins taken from South Georgia was not less than 1.25 million and the quantity of elephant seal oil weighed in at 20,000 tons. Whaling began in the twentieth century and the first shore factory was opened by C A Larsen in 1903. In 1946-47, three companies operating twenty whalers caught 2,550 whales, but by 1961 only Salvesens and Albion Star Ltd were left; they were all gone by 1963, although the Japanese operated briefly from 1963 to 1965.

An abundance of wildlife can be found there. The elephant seals suffer from acute halitosis whilst the fur seals are treacherous and to be avoided; one bit off the calf of an American tourist... The whaling stations were abandoned so promptly that when the Navy went in afterwards everywhere was very evocative of the Mary celeste. Now, sadly, vandalism has taken its toll, mainly done by merchant ship crews of all nationalities. That briefly was the background to South Georgia. The ship was scheduled to visit there in May, and we were all anticipating the event.

We arrived at mid-day, slowly approaching Grytviken, a small rust-laden enclave with a backdrop of scree slopes and mountains. In the bay was the tanker Scottish Eagle, an enormous ship that dwarfed us but in its turn was made small by the magnificent scenery. The sea approach was mottled with thin pack ice to add further contrast. Beyond, to our left, was the wide forty-foot terminal moraine of a glacier actually debouching into the blue-tinted sea. The sky was azure, the mountain peaks white.

That afternoon personnel were landed to walk around. I went ashore in the boat the following day, in rain, but wearing a survival suit which kept me and my clothes dry. These suits were de rigueur for if the boat capsized or someone fell overboard, life expectancy sans suit could be counted in minutes if not seconds. A two-mile walk followed, around the shoreline to see attractive marshland with stagnant pools between tussock grass; here we found some seals wallowing in a pond, a couple of elephant seals and a solitary king penguin sitting on its nest and determined not to be moved for anyone: the bird was much photographed. Along the shore we met another smaller Gentoo penguin and could hear the surf lashing against the shingle, the shoreline more like a giant’s discarded bag of marbles, the rounded smoothed rocks were so large and streaked with various shades. The retreating surf moved the pebbles so it sounded like distant gunfire. All along the shore was scattered whalebone, some curved pieces all of seven-foot in length. Seaweed was scattered over the pebbles, some looking like beached squid, so solid and glistening, with tentacles, as if only recently bereft of life.

On the hillside, too far for us to reach in the time allotted, lay the crashed Argentinian helicopter shot down by Royal Marines; another group from the ship found its hydraulics and engine were in almost immaculate condition, though the body of the craft was riddles with bullet holes. Tucked under a hill just outside the station, at Hope Point, was the cemetery, where Shackleton was buried on 5 January 1922; also interred here, the Argentinian young man who died in the submarine, Santa Fé. Above, on the slopes, a large stone memorial cross to Shackleton which can be seen on entering the bay. The whaling station itself boasts a wooden church which was dismantled in Norway (1913) and shipped here and re-sited; it is presently being restored, and though spartan-looking inside is in very good condition, which is more than can be said for the Kino in front of the church – the cinema (dating from about 1903) has collapsed, its roof in the stalls. Walking through the ghostly whaling station was most interesting; happily, the rain stopped and the return trip to the ship was marginally more comfortable.

Two days later eight of us were scheduled to be landed to tidy up the whalers’ library in Leith, a station just round the point from Stromness Bay. For a short while it was touch and go as the weather had deteriorated and the sea was a little lumpy. Suitably attired in survival suits again, we were taken in two groups to the jetty of Leith whaling station with all our gear in the whaler boat; watching the forward party land on the jetty in their bright orange suits, it was like observing a decontamination team investigating a disaster area in a sci-fi movie.

Meanwhile the ship floated with minimal engine turning and could not have been more than twenty feet off the sheer scree slopes of Leith harbour. Once we were deposited, the boat returned and the ship left, turning the point out of sight to anchor in Stromness Bay for the day and night, scheduled to return for us the next day at 3pm. We had brought ashore extra rations should the weather preclude our recovery on schedule).

Once ashore, we carried our gear along the jetty to shelter, a derelict warehouse, passing on either side of us on the jetty single rows of metal machinery – all positioned ready for removal by Argentinian scrap metal merchants, for it was here that it had all begun in 1982.

We divested ourselves of our survival suits as they are not comfortable for any length of time, then set off to try to find adequate shelter to stay overnight. Not one building possessed a room that had not been wantonly vandalised; the majority of windows were broken or cracked, the contents of drawers were strewn over the floors. One three-storey building was clearly a grocery warehouse; it still contained boxes of toilet rolls, lifeboat first-aid tins, evidence of rats and lots more devastation. A small office sported the remains of a whale tote board, with the total whales killed, and stationery for shipping. Upstairs I found some hardback books on the floor, though as yet no library.

We circled back the way we had come and encountered armed soldiers in combat gear, faces blackened; they were from nearby Stromness, giving the area a once-over. Happily, they had a safe-house which we could use overnight. In most places there are situated buildings converted into safe-houses, especially for anyone who has become stranded due to the capricious weather; they are stocked with food and the means to heat food and body. Here, too, the windows had been shattered; the windows of the rooms upstairs had been boarded up. The downstairs rooms were in a bad state; one contained a piano which only possessed eight keys and no sound could be forced from its depths. Upstairs, two of our company having repaired the banister rails, we found the kitchen, with gas rings attached to gas cylinders stored outside. The rooms contained beds, two each, with mattresses and curtains and there were a few candles too. One room possessed a long table and chairs where we could eat comfortably.

After a snack, then, we set off for the glacier beyond.

On our way I located the library in an accommodation block on the second floor; it was the only room which had no visible leaks from the roof, but it was a sorry sight. In the passageway were books strewn all over, mostly soggy and trampled underfoot; inside, the same dismal picture, the books and library cards covering the floor to a depth of about ten inches. Yet still over half the shelves had books on them. We would return to begin the tidying up and repairs.

The weather was kind, the sky clear and the sun shining. We could walk with our hands ungloved and not feel the cold. First, we climbed tussock-clogged hills which ascended to ragged slate-like hills and then we could view the end of the valley or bay – like an enormous natural amphitheatre, on all sides scree rising to snowline and glacier. Dotted about were pools and ponds, presumably from the meltwater. We walked on, the hills on the way were moss-covered, and very spongy underfoot, and espied reindeer, which had been imported many years back to vary the fishy diet and had survived after the whalers had left. They were very timid, and ran off before we could get close enough to photograph them. They are regularly culled by the Army otherwise their numbers would overgraze the limited food-source.

The floor of the natural amphitheatre was like large cinders, heaped up in undulating waves, interspersed with rivulets of ice-cold water and sparse tussocks of grass.

One moment there was the distant murmur of the furthest glacier’s meltwater waterfall, when suddenly the babbling of icy streams grew loud. The scree revealed where the previous winter’s glacier must have gouged out the stones; now melting ice slowed along these small canyons. I climbed to the moraine of the glacier and it was solid ice, transparent and ringed blue.

We spent some time climbing up the side of the glacier, inside and under it too, over rocks that cascaded meltwater. The reflected light inside the glacier was bright. On our way back we followed the deer along the valley, not the way we had come, and while we were unable to get close to them we encountered penguins amid grass tussocks; all of them having just returned from a dip in the sea about two miles off. Further down, along the beach, was a group of seals. And on the shingle dunes we came across an enormous elephant seal, moulting; he was unprepossessing and foul.

A short climb to the headland where a signal gun pointed into the bay. And then back to work on the library and to eat.

That night three of us left the safe-house with torches and looked around the buildings. It was fascinating – and a little eerie – to walk through the abandoned station, with the wind blowing against loose corrugated iron and whistling in the rotting eaves. The night was clear. Thousands of stars were visible in the southern firmament, even the Milky Way and Orion. We found a vast variety of technical equipment, a lot of it cannibalised, but some still in its grease-paper packing. The whaling slipway was spooky at night and though no whales had been slaughtered and carved up there for many years, to my mind there still hovered an unwholesome aura about the place. While crediting the station for its ingenuity in production-line treatment of dead whales in order to waste nothing, it was grossly obscene. It seems fitting that the whales are no longer killed near here and that the machinery is in disuse, that Man has devastated the area that Man created; the naturally created features, such as the screes, mountains and glaciers are pure, unblemished, unspoiled by Man.

On return, we slept, to awaken in a chilly dawn. After tidying up and clearing away the mess in the library, we walked round the point to view the anchored ship in Stromness Bay; on the way we had to climb two cliffs with a few tussocks serving as handholds, for the way round the shoreline was impassable. Also on the way, near the four seals we’d seen yesterday, we encountered a pup seal that was small enough to be quite mobile and had big puppy-dog eyes; it flopped towards us; perhaps it was a trifle vain, since it wended its way towards whoever was pointing the camera. It was certainly unafraid.

We watched two young seals playing in the surf, unmindful of the elders or us. From this vantage point we could view the snow-clad mountains, probably the Arcady range. Then it was time to wend our way back down. Breaking off from the others, I descended past a fresh-tasting cool brook, spotted a reindeer hobbling among tumbledown boulders at the foot of a gigantic scree. A short while later I crested a slope and found myself no more than twenty feet from a herd of grazing reindeer, many resplendent with enormous antlers. We eyed each other for many frozen minutes, then they sauntered off. Later still, I came upon a rock penguin colony; dozens standing upright, motionless, facing the sun to warm or dry themselves. They quickly detected my presence and were reluctant to stay near me. Then it was time to get back.

After packing, we mustered on the jetty for the boat. Then over the radio we heard that the ship had changed its plans and would be staying another night; would we like to remain here too? We unhesitatingly gave the affirmative.

We spent the day strengthening and repairing the roof over the library and that night we set out in the dark with torches, across the marshland and up the hills, eventually splitting up and, surprisingly, I managed to navigate well enough to relocate the penguin colony. There were hundreds now, and they seemed to be attracted by the torchlight. A number of them actually stampeded towards me as I tried to photograph them: I managed a picture of my foot and a penguin’s wing that time. Then we left them to resume their interrupted sleep, heading back to the safe-house, collecting water from the stream on the way.

Next morning we woke to find a heavy frost had descended, the rust-coloured screes were all now silvery-white, lending a ghostly sheen to the surrounding land and dilapidated station. We were collected by boat. Snow fell heavily shortly afterwards; we had barely avoided being snowed in. Large snowflakes, blanketing the area, with gulls and other birds, including cormorants, flying zigzag, and a solitary penguin swimming close by.

It was the most memorable period in our forty-two weeks away from home.

***

Since 1985, changes have occurred.

In more eco-conscious times, the reindeer were considered a pest, damaging the island’s flora and other aspects of the ecosystem. So, in 2013 teams of Norwegian government shooters and reindeer herders culled all 3,500 reindeer on the island. The culled animals were frozen and taken to the Falkland Islands where they were sold to local residents and cruise ship operators.

And in 2018, after a lengthy extermination effort, the island was declared free of rats and other invasive rodents and as a result the number of South Georgia pipits, snowy sheathbills, South Georgia pintails and Wilson's storm petrels have increased. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE ARGENTINE FIGHT FOR THE FALKLANDS - Book review

Martin Middlebrook (2003, revised from the 1988 edition). The author was generously given time and interviews by many Argentine combatants, but received no help from their air force. He relied heavily on Falklands – The Air War, a comprehensive book concerning all aircraft in the conflict.

It is enlightening to read about the conflict (April-June 1982) from the Argentine perspective.

In mid-January 1982 a Working Party met at Army HQ in the Liberatador Building, Buenos Aires.Members were Vice-Admiral Lombardo, General Osvaldo Garcia of the Army and Brigadier-General Siegfriedo Plessl of the Air Force. They expected planning to be complete by 15 September: by then HMS Endurance would be withdrawn, the training of conscripts would be well advanced and the re-equipment of the Naval Air Arm with Super Étendard aircraft and weapons would be completed.

However, events dictated otherwise. Scrap metal merchants landed on South Georgia (a Dependency of the Falkland Islands) without obtaining permission which created an international incident. As the talks between Argentina and Great Britain concerning the Falklands were not going anywhere, the Argentine junta decided to bring forward their ‘repossession’ plans to force the British Government’s hand...

Ships started loading at 8am on 28 March at Puerto Belgrano...

Troops were warned that there was to be no excesses against the enemy troops, women or private property when they ‘took back’ the islands. It was considered as a semi-religious crusade – even renaming the Operation Blue after the Virgin Mary’s robe.

Many soldiers experienced ‘an excess of joy’ to be involved – (p65).

However, a senior Argentine army officer considered the enterprise ‘a crazy expedition by demented people. It was stupid to offend a big country like Britain...’ (p17).

So, on 2 April the seaborne Argentine attack resulted in the taking of the Falkland Islands with very little loss of life.

On 3 April, a platoon of the First Marine Infantry Battalion on the frigate Guerrico set out to Grytviken (South Georgia) which was manned by about 22 Royal Marines. The marines put up a fight, but inevitably outgunned with superior numbers had to surrender.

In remarkably quick time, the British Task Force sailed, a response the Argentines had not expected. A British Exclusion Zone was set up...

On 12 April, the EEC embargo on trade and help came into effect: French technicians linked to the Super Étendards were due but were cancelled. The Argentines had only five aircraft and five Exocet aircraft-missiles.

Of the criticism of the sinking of the Belgrano on 2 May, Middlebrook considers it ‘humbug’ – and Captain Bonzo of that ill-fated ship agrees: ‘By no means do I have any feelings of anger’ (p116). In effect, once Argentine aircraft attacked RN ships on 1 May, war had begun and the 200-mile exclusion zone no longer applied, and the Belgrano was carrying 400 troops (a quarter died).

After the sinking, the Argentine fleet stayed off Argentina’s shore and did not engage the British.

The Argentine aircraft were up against the phenomenal Harriers as well as ship-born missiles and guns. ‘The whole world would come to admire the gallantry shown by the Argentine pilots’ (p150).

Damage to the RN ships would have been greater save that many bombs that hit the vessels did not explode. The Argentine Skyhawks and Daggers released their bombs when flying too low, not giving the bomb fuses time to arm themselves (p154).

Towards the end, as the Harriers gained air-superiority, the Argentine soldiers on the Falklands felt abandoned: the air force and the navy stood by on the mainland and did little for them, save brave bold re-supply flights into Stanley.

The end was inevitable, perhaps, but many of the Argentine soldiers put up a good fight, even though by then they were mostly demoralised.

Middlebrook obtained many pertinent quotations; here is a sample:

The Argentine padre told the men ‘God would forgive us. We must kill as many British as possible... By then I knew we were being told lies...’ (p274).

‘The junta and people at other levels all lied to the country’ (p290).

‘I have always admired the British, and it made me very sad that the only war I ever fought in was against the British’ (p290)

Many soldiers came to resent their officers more than the British (p275).

A worthy addition to any Falklands War book collection.

Editorial comments:

The author may have miscounted the aircraft-mounted Exocets: ‘No further opportunity occurred for the Argentines to use the remaining three Exocets’ (p247).

And yet: Two Exocets fired (p124) – one hit the Sheffield, which sunk; the second missed. Three left. Two Super Étendards fired Exocets and one hit the Atlantic Conveyor (p174). One left. On p202 it is admitted there is only one Exocet left.

‘The deer had been originally introduced to the island for sport-shooting purposes (p11). However, when I went to South Georgia (in 1985) I was told that the deer were introduced to vary the whalers’ diet. Culling was necessary from time to time to keep the numbers down and in 2013 teams of Norwegian government shooters and reindeer herders culled all 3,500 reindeer on the island.

 

THE DARK FRONTIER - Book review

Eric Ambler’s debut novel The Dark Frontier was published in 1936, when the master was still learning his craft.

It’s an unusual treatment, beginning with a statement by Henry Barstow, physicist, in which he claims that he has no recollection of being involved in certain events April 17^th and May 26^th of 193-. Apparently the American journalist William Casey believes he can fill in the blanks.

Then we’re into Part One – ‘The man who changed his mind’; third-person narrative. An arms manufacturer called Simon Groom approaches Barstow, asking him to travel to the eastern city of Zovgorod in the small country of Ixania (both fictionalised ‘for security reasons’), where they can locate a certain scientist, Kassen, who has invented an atomic bomb. Groom wants the weapon’s blueprints for his firm and needs Barstow to verify their accuracy. Initially, Barstow declines. However, some time later, Barstow is involved in a motoring accident and he sustains a head injury. From the moment of his recovery he believes he is Conway Carruthers, a British secret agent: ‘he was of that illustrious company which numbers Sherlock Holmes, Raffles, Arséne Lupin, Bulldog Drummond and Sexton Blake among its members’ (p31). Interesting that Ambler does not refer to Simon Templar, the Saint: Charteris’s first Saint novel (Meet the Tiger) was published in 1928 and by 1936 had established a best-selling reputation. Maybe the style Ambler adopted was similar to Charteris’s at this point, especially the dry humour: ‘It also boasted the dubious honour of being  the best hotel in the place, a distinction reflected more in the magnitude of its charges than in the comfort of its accommodation’ (p79).

Then, roughly half-way in, we come to Part Two – ‘Revolution’ which is narrated in the first person by Casey. To complicate matters, there is the beautiful and alluring Countess Magda Schverzinski: ‘She desires power and glory for Ixania. The peasants ask no more than food for their bellies’ (p161).

The transformation of Barstow into Carruthers is amusing and well done. There are sufficient bad guys wielding guns to inject tension, and escapes and car chases – all the ingredients of thrillers that would follow over the years.

Ambler’s use of the atomic bomb as an Alfred Hitchcock MacGuffin was quite prescient, and would be replicated by subsequent thriller writers.

An enjoyable adventure, worth reading.

Editorial comment:

There are a number of typos which presumably have survived since the original publication. (Agreed, we all suffer from them – but you’d think that some editor would pick them up eventually).

In addition, Casey went for his usual walk on May 3^rd – yet this is related in the chapter that covers 11-21 May... (p176).

One annoying trait of some writers is to tell us something happened before it has happened, thus destroying any suspense. In this case Casey reveals on p184 the deaths of three characters who do finally die later (p209 or thereabouts).

The editor should have corrected this: ‘I saw the flash of a shot in the grounds and a shout’ (p140). You can’t see a shout. The insertion of ‘and heard’ would fix it.

GALLOWS THIEF - Book review

Bernard Cornwell’s 2001 historical novel Gallows Thief is yet another rip-roaring fast-paced enjoyable read.

Set in England a short while after Waterloo we find retired Captain of the 52^nd Regiment, Rider Sandman, in need of work for his late father left his family with massive debts. Another problem for Sandman is his proneness to quick temper: ‘His soldiers had known there was a devil in Captain Sandman... he was not a man to cross because he had the temper as sudden and as fierce as a summer storm of lightning and thunder’ (p54).

The Countess of Avebury, previously an opera dancer, was killed while having her portrait painted. The artist, Charles Corday, was accused and found guilty of the murder. However, his mother has the ear of the Queen and the Home Secretary, Viscount Sidmouth, is tasked with ascertaining without a doubt that the guilty verdict is sound. Sidmouth hires Sandman to investigate. Sandman was a man of principle and, after an interview with the condemned man, he came away not liking him but believed in his plea of innocence.

Sandman is an excellent cricketer, but he is reluctant to play as the game is spoiled by gambling and cheating. ‘He refused to share a carriage with men who had accepted bribes to lose a match’ (p27). The early – underarm bowling – history of cricket is one of many fascinating snippets Cornwell provides: with even a discussion on adopting overarm bowling (p270).

There are several characters – Sally Hood and her brother the highwayman Jack, Sergeant Sam Berrigan, Eleanor Forrest, Sandman’s ex-fiancée, and the Reverend Lord Alexander; the latter has been studying the flash language – for example the many words for a pickpockets, from cly-fakers to buzz-coves. Flash language for a gallows thief is someone who deprives the hangman of his victim (p195).

As Sandman is attempting to prevent a hanging, there is considerable detail about the capital punishment of the time, much in graphic imagery. Needless to say, many innocent individuals ended up on the gallows; however, the majority of those condemned had their sentences commuted to transportation to Australia.

A hero of Waterloo, Sandman recalls his time in Spain, notably when he was saved from French cavalry by a Greenjacket officer and his half-dozen riflemen – clearly, an allusion to Sharpe and his chosen men (p338).

Can Sandman obtain proof of Corday’s innocence before the fateful hour? It’s a race against time and powerful adversaries who prefer the artist to hang.

As ever, Cornwell has created a believable sordid benighted world of that period, complete with crisp dialogue, humour both dark and ribald, and with strong characters. Highly recommended.

Note:

Bernard Cornwell acknowledges a debt to Donald Rumbelow and his book The Triple Tree (1982). I met Mr Rumbelow, previously a London policeman, in the 1970s at Swanwick, where he gave a talk about his book The Complete Jack the Ripper. 

THE SECOND SLEEP - Book review

Robert Harris’s 2019 novel The Second Sleep is most intriguing and certainly kept me reading.

It is set in 1468 when we meet the young priest Christopher Fairfax on his way to the remote Exmoor village of Addicott St George. The local vicar, Father Lacy has recently died and Fairfax is to conduct the funeral rites and sort out the dead clergyman’s possessions.

‘(Fairfax) was always hungry, yet he remained as thin as a stray dog. His body seemed determined to make up for all the food it had missed during the years when he was at the seminary’ (p41).

Fairfax is disturbed to find that Lacy was not only an amateur archaeologist investigating fragments from the pre-Apocalypse time, which is deemed heresy by the powerful Church, but also harbours a large collection of forbidden antiquarian books.

Worse, in the dead vicar’s display cabinet were examples from his unearthings: ‘coins and plastic banknotes from the Elizabethan era... a plate commemorating a royal wedding, a bundle of plastic straws... toy plastic bricks all fitted together of vibrant yellows and reds... one of the devices used by the ancients to communicate...He turned it over. On the back was the ultimate symbol of the ancients’ hubris and blasphemy – an apple with a bite taken out of it’ (p23).

‘Centuries earlier, as part of its rejection of scientism, the Church had rooted out the heretical modernised texts of the time before the Apocalypse’ (p32).

Fairfax discovers a letter written by a Nobel laureate, Morgenstern, written in 2022 – a pre-Apocalypse date. In this missive he warns that civilisation and science-based life could collapse if any one or more six catastrophic events occurred, among them climate change, a nuclear exchange, a pandemic... ‘All civilisations consider themselves invulnerable; history warns us that none is’ (p58).

By now, Fairfax is sorely troubled. ‘He wished he could unsee what he had read, but knowledge alters everything, and he knew that was impossible’ (p62).

It’s clear that Fairfax is in our future, following an apocalyptic event that destroyed most of science as we know it. The calendar was reset after the Apocalypse so that it started in the year 666, the number assigned to the Beast of Revelation. Eight hundred years in our future.

There is a standing army, in conflict with the Northern Caliphate, an Islamist enclave; but this is not really touched upon in any detail...

‘The drive was a track, no better than the lane. Waterlogged potholes, smooth as mirrors, held blue fragments of sky, and curved in a glittering archipelago for a hundred yards until they disappeared behind a pair of ancient cedars’ (p92).

‘As it opened, (the door) dragged in tendrils of ivy that clutched at the doorposts as if the house was reluctant to allow these rare visitors to escape’ (p114).

Fairfax teams up with Lady Sarah Durston, a widow. Her husband, Colonel Durston, had also been interested in excavating items owned by the ancients, notably near the mystical Devil’s Chair on a nearby hill. Sarah has an unwelcome suitor, the gruff mill-owner Hancock.

These three hook up with a heretic, Shadwell, who provides his version of the past: ‘these devices were small enough to be carried in the palm of one’s hand; that they gave instant access to all the knowledge and music and opinions and writings in the world; and that in due course they displaced human memory and reasoning and even normal social intercourse – an enfeebling and narcotic power that some say drove their possessors mad...’ (p158)

Perhaps the message here is that, despite human hubris, no matter what the calamity that befalls, humanity will survive.

As ever, Harris’s prose is a delight to read, and, for me, his characters came alive, especially with regard to the relationship of Sarah, Fairfax and Hancock. There are other individuals in the tale, all finely drawn, perhaps with a nod or two to Thomas Hardy. And there is a twist or two in the plot.

Sadly, I found the ending disappointing. But that cannot detract from the pleasure of meeting the characters and of the actual journey the book took me on.

Editorial comment:

Visually, we should have been aware of Fairfax’s beard on the first page, rather than the third.

CROCODILE ON THE SANDBANK - Book review

The first Amelia Peabody novel, Crocodile on the Sandbank, was published in 1975.  I read her third and sixth adventures (The Mummy Case and The Last Camel Died at Noon, respectively) in 2001, and enjoyed them immensely. Thereafter I collected four more adventures over the years but have only now got round to reading them. There are twenty books in the series.

Narrated in the first person by Amelia, it is a light-hearted period piece beginning in 1880: her father has died, leaving her a wealthy woman – she was ‘visited by streams of attentive nieces and nephews assuring me of their devotion – which had been demonstrated, over the past years, by their absence... A middle-aged spinster – for I was at that time thirty-two years of age, and I scorned to disguise the fact – who has never received a proposal of marriage must be a simpleton if she fails to recognise the sudden acquisition of a fortune as a factor in her new popularity. I was not a simpleton. I had always known myself to be plain’ (p4).

Elizabeth Peters gets the tone just right – an emancipated and forthright woman in a man’s world.

She was keen to travel, her ultimate destination being Egypt. While en route, in Rome her chaperone, Miss Pritchett fell ill and returned to England. By chance, Amelia helps a destitute young woman in the street; Evelyn Barton-Forbes has been ruined and abandoned by her callous lover Alberto: ‘She was English, surely; that flawless white skin and pale-golden hair could belong to no other nation... The features might have been those of an antique Venus or young Diana’ (p10). Evelyn becomes Amelia’s companion and they travel to Egypt. Evelyn ‘was too kind, and too truthful. Both, I have found, are inconvenient character traits’ (p77).

Amelia needed to obtain certain supplies to sail on the Nile. ‘If I had not been a woman, I might have studied medicine; I have a natural aptitude for the subject, possessing steady hands and far less squeamishness about blood and wounds than many males of my acquaintance. I planned to buy a few small surgical knives also; I fancied I could amputate a limb – or at least a toe or finger – rather neatly if called upon to do so’ (p44).

Before long the pair encounter two archaeologists – the Emerson brothers: gruff, bearded irascible giant Radcliffe and the amiable Walter. Radcliffe Emerson reminded me of Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger.

It is obvious that Amelia and Radcliffe spark off each other, two strong wills competing: ‘Peabody had better retire to her bed; she is clearly in need of recuperative sleep; she has not made a sarcastic remark for fully ten minutes’ (p242).

Her nursing skills are needed more than once. ‘I tore up my petticoat in order to fasten his arm to his body so that it would not be jarred unnecessarily. He had his wicked temper back by then, and made a rude remark. “As you would say, my lord, it is just like one of Mr Haggard’s romances. The heroine always sacrifices a petticoat at some point in the proceedings. No doubt that is why females wear such ridiculous garments; they do come in useful in emergencies’ (p168).

The Emerson dig is sabotaged, there are strange, possibly supernatural, things going on, and Evelyn seems at great risk... An enjoyable historical romance and mystery.

Elizabeth Peters is the pen-name of Barbara Mertz and also wrote as Barbara Michaels; she received her PhD in Egyptology in 1952. She died in 2013, aged 85.

CLANDESTINE OPERATIONS FROM MALTA - Book review

 

Clandestine operations from Malta and the French Resistance connection in Tunisia is a fascinating book by Frederick Galea, Platon Alexiades and Adrien Abraham, published by Wise Owl Publications in 2023.

It does what it says in the title, complete with many black and white photographs, and covers the period 1938 to 1943 in considerable detail.

In the Second World War Malta was vital to the Allied effort, serving as a staging post for espionage and submarines against the Axis forces in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. That was why, at great cost in lives, convoys were sent to bolster the islands during the terrible air onslaught by the Italian and German forces.

Many vital clandestine missions were undertaken, among them beach reconnaissance of Italy and Sicily – the latter for Operation Husky (a secret protected by Operation Mincemeat no less), sabotage of railways and bridges and factories, intelligence gathering, anti-shipping with underwater chariots, commando raids, extraction of agents, and diversions. These efforts, notably by the agents in Tunisia (who were in contact with Malta) aided the detection and destruction of Axis shipping, thus denying important replenishment supplies for Rommel et al.

The beach reconnaissance efforts impressed Lord Mountbatten and led to the creation of Combined Operations Pilotage Parties (COPP) – they trained at a secret base on Hayling Island, Portsmouth. They used chariots and folding boats (folbots) that could be easily transported by submarine and get through the boats’ forward hatches.

Agents were flown from Malta to Tunisia to set up a French Resistance network. Every flight was fraught with tension and suspense.

Remarkably, planes took off from Mildenhall in Suffolk, flying through the night and, after covering nearly 1,600 miles, much of it over occupied France – to deliver sabotage units, such as X Troop to Malta. For example, in February 1941 X Troop flew from Malta in six Whitworth Whitleys and parachuted into the Genestra area and seriously damaged an aqueduct; inconveniencing the Italian troops and locals and affecting morale.

The authors quote witnesses to many of the events; sources are provided at the back of the book.

Many of the agents and other personnel involved in transporting them received honours post-war – some posthumously.

SECRETS OF MALTA - Book review

 

Cecily Blench’s second historical novel Secrets of Malta was published in 2024. It is set in 1943, primarily in Malta but also in London, Tunisia and Egypt; there are flashbacks to Syria in 1926.

The dreadful plague of air-raids on Malta has lessened by now.

As the title suggests, the story involves intelligence activities of the Allies against the Axis forces. Dennis Pratchett is sent to Malta to root out a suspected mole in the intelligence community of Malta. ‘Chap called Morton runs our networks in North Africa and he’s got several operatives who go back and forth’ (p20). Pratchett’s senior, Sir Harold informs him the suspected agent was active in the last war and used the code-name Nero; and the man was believed to be responsible for a couple of murders in Europe before the war. The presence of Nero in Malta at this critical time is most serious – for reasons that will be explained in the book much later...

Margarita is a cabaret singer in Valletta; she has just ended an affair with Henry Dunn. Mrs Vera Dunn accosts Margarita in the night club and reveals that Henry has gone missing. There is no animosity between them; indeed, they seem sympathetic towards each other.

In 1926 Vera was one of four young archaeology students working on a dig in Syria for Professor Curzon. The relevance of these flashbacks only becomes significant as the book progresses.

Now, Margarita is courting a submarine officer, Arthur. Several submarines are involved in covert missions, landing spies in Tunisia, which was recently occupied by Axis forces.

The two women conduct their own investigations, and secrets are revealed...

Vera is a pragmatist: ‘Nothing does more to stimulate one’s sex drive than a war’ (p131).

The author has captured the period and the situation both in Malta, Tunisia and in Syria. Her characters provoke interest throughout. There were some clever misdirections, too; which only seems appropriate in a book about spying and deception!

Perhaps more could have been made of the awful destruction from the almost continuous bombing of 1942, and the stoic response of the inhabitants; but that’s a minor quibble.

I kept turning the pages; it was a quick read, made enjoyable because the setting was familiar.

Editorial comments:

‘Arthur had complained that Malta had no beaches, but Margarita had taken him to one of her swimming spots, where they swam off warm rocks...’ (p59). I’ve heard this nonsense before. There are plenty of sandy beaches on Malta!

There are a lot of ‘sighs’ and ‘sighing heavily’ – which do not detract from the reading pleasure; but perhaps the editor could have addressed some of them.

‘Her eyes brushed past and then returned to settle on him’ (p366). To avoid the surreal image, it would read better if ‘gaze’ was used instead of ‘eyes’!

NOBODY TRUE - Book review

James Herbert’s 2003 novel Nobody True is another excursion into ‘life after death’ with a similar dark tone to his earlier book, Others (1999).

It begins intriguingly with the sentence ‘I wasn’t there when I died’ – which echoes his epigraph at the front of the book: ‘It’s not that I’m afraid to die. It’s just that I don’t want to be there when it happens – Woody Allen’.

As he grows up the narrator, James True, realises that he can induce an ‘out-of-body experience’. This is akin to remote viewing. Apparently, he was absent from his body when he was murdered in a hotel. He now finds himself a floating soul, able to fly and view but not able to touch or feel anything in a physical sense.

His back-story is interesting. He studied graphic art and went into advertising. In one of several footnotes he mentions those adverts which are so clever yet the brand name goes unnoticed. Herbert was writing from experience as he studied at Hornsey College of Art and went into advertising.  Eventually, True starts his own agency with his friend Oliver and marries Oliver’s ex-girlfriend Andrea, and they have a daughter Primrose. The firm and their marriage seem successful.

After about seven years of marriage, the city is alarmed by a vicious serial killer who, when we encounter him, proves quite terrifying. The killer is blamed for James True’s murder, apparently.

True has to take time to adjust to his new life as an invisible non-physical entity. Gradually, he gets on the trail of the killer. Along the way in this page-turning book there are many twists and turns, littered with broken trust, guilt and greed.

Herbert brings to the fore much of his esoteric knowledge about the supernatural, including Kirlian auras. Long before the end, James True is belaboured with dreadful and hurtful revelations, to the point where he asks, ‘Was nobody true to me?’ (p482).

Classic Herbert and with an ending as poignant yet strangely as uplifting as that of Others.

Editorial comment:

‘Andrea kept her voice low, only the gravity of its tone reaching Prim and I on the sofa’ (p158). Of course that should read ‘Prim and me’.

AFTER THE ACT - Book review

 

Winston Graham’s suspense novel After the Act was published in 1965.

Playwright Morris Scott has been married for seven years to Harriet, a rich older woman, his muse, who suffers from ill health. Over those years she supported and encouraged him: ‘You ought to be relentless, Morris. Relentless to writing it down. Once the bones are there you can drape them and undrape them at will’ (p63) And now he is successful and planning for one of his plays to appear in Paris.

It had not been planned. ‘I was a man going to meet a girl, surrounded only by the anticipation, tautened like a bow-string with pleasure’ (p17). Inevitably, he has an affair with Alexandra Wilshere, a secretary to a rich couple in France. Passion, obsession... ‘We walked on the quay and walked together through the little town, which was murmurous with people. Cars probed the narrow streets like medical isotopes in a bloodstream...’ (p67)

A budding writer could learn from some of Morris’s observations:

‘Half of writing is gestation’ (p26).

‘You have to be tough to reach the top in any profession these days. Stamina’s an essential part of genius, whether you’re a four-minute miler or a composer of symphonies’ (p27).

‘How easy it is for a writer to lie, the inventions spring to his lips’ (p47).

The suspense deepens when Harriet falls to her death from a Paris hotel balcony. Was it an accident, or murder, or carelessness? ‘We all make mistakes; the error is in trying to hide them’ (p197). That phrase could well be the epitaph of many a politician’s career! The fact is that now Morris is free to wed Alexandra. If his conscience will permit it. ‘To be honest around a central lie is like building a house with the foundations unlevel’ (p135).

Graham the craftsman has delved into life, death and guilt. ‘The sun set. Dusk crept in like the beginning of death’ (p191).

Editorial note:

‘a passionate unsophisticated fumbling in the dark... among the heather and the bickering cicadas’ (p75). Long ago I was corrected: cicadas make their noise in the hot day, crickets make their noise at night, and this seems borne out by my time in Spain.

TO HAVE AND TO HOLD - Book review

 

Mary Johnston’s classic novel To Have and To Hold about love and intrigue in seventeenth century Virginia was published in 1899.

Beginning in 1621, it’s a first-person narrative by Captain Ralph Percy; his cousin is the Lord of Northumberland (which happens to be my home county, where I now live!)

Johnston’s prose is of its time, naturally, but easy to read, and her descriptions are excellent, such as that for preacher, Jeremy Sparrow, a giant of a man: ‘his face, which was of a cast most martial, flashed into a smile, like sunshine on a scarred cliff’ (p16). Another example: ‘Each twig had its row of diamonds, and the wet leaves we pushed aside spilled gems upon us. The horses set their hoofs daintily upon fern and moss and lush grass. In the purple distances deer stood at gaze, the air rang with innumerable bird notes, clear and sweet, squirrels chattered, bees hummed, and through the thick leafy roof of the forest the sun showered gold dust’ (p48).

A ship from England has brought a number of women for betrothal to boost the numbers in Jamestown; the usual purchase price is a quantity of tobacco, to pay for the passage. Ralph Percy is not particularly keen but finds himself defending the honour of one of the women and then determines to wed her there and then. Her name is Jocelyn. Impulse purchase, perhaps.

Later he learns that she is Lady Jocelyn Leigh and was a ward of the King. But when she learned she was to be betrothed to Lord Carnal, the sovereign’s favourite, she fled the Court and embarked on the ship destined for Jamestown, one among the many women.

Nearby are friendly Indians, including the Powhatans and the Paspaheghs. ‘The Indian listened; then said, in that voice that always made me think of some cold, still, bottomless pool lying black beneath overhanging rocks...’ (p123). Yet the friendship is strained...

Yet Lord Carnal soon arrives in the settlement, hell-bent on taking Jocelyn back to England with him. He is a man who gets what he wants, even if it means killing.

There is suspense – when Lord Carnal attempts to drug Ralph – and humour with the irrepressible Preacher Sparrow. Johnston is sympathetic to the Indians, too: ‘Why did you come? Long ago, when there were none but dark men from the Chesapeake to the hunting grounds beneath the sunset, we were happy. Why did you leave your own land, in strange black ships with sails like the piled-up clouds of summer? Was it not a good land? Were not your forests broad and green, your fields fruitful, your rivers deep and filled with fish? Ill gifts have you brought us, evil have you wrought us’ (p336). And there is fighting and action aplenty, and a piratical interlude as well. Betrayal, love, humour and honour – all are here. And some of the action actually occurred – a slice of history.

Despite its age, To Have and To Hold this remarkable book of adventure is a page-turner and can rank up there with the novels of James Fennimore Cooper.

Johnston died in 1936, aged 65. The book has been adapted for film three times, most recently in 2014 featuring Aiden Turner.