Pulp Den Awards

Publisher, author and avid reader Tom Johnson issues a variety of awards at the end of each year, and these are for stand-alone science fiction novel, best new pulp novel, best SF/horror novel, best mystery/thriller, best fantasy novel that he has read in 2017. See here

"The 2017 PULP DEN AWARD for the best Spy series I read in 2017 is the Tana Standish female psychic spy from Britain. There is good action in this well written series, and the stories flow smoothly. This is a great new series for spy fiction fans."

Thank you, sir!

 

A great new action heroine to be watched

A new 5-star review for the first documented  mission of Tana Standish, psychic spy. 

"Tana Standish, now 38, was an orphan Jewish girl trying to escape Warsaw by sneaking on a ship with her brother. Her brother is killed trying to find food on the ship. She was also caught later but before she is killed a British submarine torpedoes the ship. The survivors included the young girl. MI6 learns that she has psychic abilities, and when she grows up they train her as an espionage agent. She doesn’t really read minds, but receives impressions, and can detect danger, hostile and friendly elements, as well as pick up hidden names. She is also studying remote viewing in connection to her abilities.

"Mission Prague is not her first assignment, but it is the first published tale about this psychic spy...
 
"This is a brand new British espionage thriller set in the Cold War, and Tana Standish is a great new action heroine to be watched. 

"The novel is topnotch, though the author goes off on tangents a bit too much in order to tie the story and real people into real events. Still, if you are looking for a great new series, try this author out. 

"You’ll like Tana Standish, the psychic spy. Highly recommended."

Thank you, Virginia E. Johnson! 

Mission: Prague
Available from Amazon as a paperback and e-book here

 

Head of British Secret Intelligence Service

Recently, there has been some controversy regarding a suggestion for a blue plaque for Admiral Sir Hugh Francis Paget Sinclair (1873-1939). However, English Heritage apparently ruled that he was not ‘historically significant’ enough to be recognised with a blue plaque at his official London residence in Queen Anne’s Gate, which was linked by a secret tunnel to MI6 HQ.  If you’ve been reading the news over the last few months, you’ll be aware that certain individuals in English Heritage have lost the plot, and this could be construed as another example of their arrant political correctness.

Sinclair certainly achieved a lot. He joined the Royal Navy aged 13 and entered the Naval Intelligence Division at the outset of the First World War. By 1919 he had become the Director of Naval Intelligence. In 1923, he took over from Sir Mansfield Cumming as the director of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, aka MI6).

As early as 1919 he was concerned about the influence of Bolshevism, but in the main his concerns were ignored. By 1936 he discovered that the Gestapo had infiltrated several SIS stations; at about this time Lieutenant Colonel Sir Claude Edward Marjoribanks Dansey set up Z Organisation, intent on working independently from the compromised SIS.

Sinclair was asked in December 1938 to prepare a dossier on Adolf Hitler, for the attention of the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister. The dossier received short shrift as it was believed that it did not gel with Britain's policy of appeasement. Sinclair had described Hitler as possessing the characteristics of ‘fanaticism, mysticism, ruthlessness, cunning, vanity, moods of exaltation and depression, fits of bitter and self-righteous resentment; and what can only be termed a streak of madness; but with it all there is a great tenacity of purpose, which has often been combined with extraordinary clarity of vision’ (Foreign Office files)

In 1938, with war looming, Sinclair set up Section D, dedicated to sabotage and in the spring of 1938, using £6,000 of his own money, he bought Bletchley Park to be a wartime intelligence station. He died of cancer in 1939 so did not see the fruits of the code-breaking group at Bletchley that shortened the war.

When writing my first Tana Standish novel, Mission: Prague, one of my characters, the head of International Enterprises (‘Interprises’), an adjunct of SIS, was loosely based on both Sinclair and Dansey: Sir Gerald Hazzard, born 1909. His entry in Who’s who reads: Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford; Recreations, yacht-racing, crosswords and chess; ‘attached to Foreign Office, 1939-present’ which is polite British jargon for working in the SIS [the ‘present’ was 1975-1978]. However, his physical stature was based on my first civilian boss after leaving school…

Hazzard’s recruitment of psychic Tana Standish is related in Mission: Prague:

England, 1965

“Tread carefully,” was Sir Gerald’s high-pitched warning to her as she boarded the train at Waterloo ten years ago, destined for the Fort, one of MI6’s training establishments, an old Napoleonic stone-walled edifice on the Gosport peninsula on the south coast of Hampshire.

Standing beside the middle-aged yet cadaverous man had been her grey-haired mother, bravely trying to fight back tears.

“Mum, I’m a big girl now, you know?” Tana said.

“Twenty-eight last May, dear, I know.” Her mother smiled back. “But I’m worried about what Gerald’s letting you get into. It’s dangerous.”

“She’ll be all right, Vera, my dear,” Sir Gerald piped. “In fact, I actually pity the instructors!”

The totally inappropriate falsetto voice of Sir Gerald had taken some getting used to, as had his emaciated appearance. There seemed to be little flesh on his face. Tana had seen survivors from the concentration camps and the facial features of the majority had been drawn, almost corpse-like, the skull’s bone structure clearly visible. She knew for a fact that Sir Gerald dined well and often, yet his head and, judging by how his clothes hung on his gaunt frame, his body too closely resembled some unfortunate who had endured a Nazi death-camp.

Sir Gerald had been like an uncle to her since Hugh Standish died in her childhood yet, officially, he only came into her life when she was twenty-eight, ostensibly to recruit her into his fledgling organisation, ‘Interprises’.

Ten years ago. When she’d qualified for the Intelligence Officers’ New Entry Course.

The day had been bleak and wind-swept as she hurried from the draughty Portsmouth Harbour railway station to the pontoon where she caught the little steam craft Ferry Prince, which seemed to be overloaded with commuters, among them Royal Navy sailors in square rig hanging onto their white hats. Halfway across the harbour, she saw one sailor lose his hat overboard and the young man swore, no doubt fearing that he’d be on a charge when he turned up at his submarine base, HMS Dolphin. Away on their left, she noticed the distinctive ten-storey tall tower, rumoured to have been built by German prisoners-of-war. Below it were the motley brick buildings of Fort Blockhouse, the submarine base, with two menacing black boats moored alongside.

On the Gosport side she’d been met by a Ministry of Defence driver in dark serge who had commented disparagingly on the weather then bundled her suitcase into the back of the highly-polished Rover.

The journey seemed circuitous – the driver explained that there was a crossing called Pneumonia Bridge over the creek but it was only capable of taking pedestrians and cyclists, not cars. “One day they might get round to building a proper road, I suppose,” he moaned, “but it’ll be after I’m drawing my pension, I shouldn’t wonder!”

Eventually, they turned onto Anglesey Road, part of the district of Alverstoke where many retired admirals were supposed to live, and this led down to the coast road and Stokes Bay, which offered a sweeping panoramic view of the Solent and the Isle of Wight.

Turning left, they passed several fenced-off military establishments.

Further along still, beyond the narrow hedge-bordered coast road, she knew, were the high brick walls of the submarine base and the Royal Navy’s Hospital Haslar. However, after a short drive they turned off to the right onto what appeared to be an unadopted road with a sign on their left indicating,

GOVERNMENT PROPERTY.

FORT MONCKTON ONLY.

NO UNAUTHORISED VEHICLES

BEYOND THIS   POINT.

They passed this and the 15 mph sign and headed towards an unprepossessing collection of brick buildings partially concealed by an overgrowth of brambles and weeds, all behind barbed wire.

Their car crossed over a drawbridge and it seemed they were expected as Fort Monckton’s ponderous studded steel doors swung wide on well-oiled rails and hinges.

***

I lived in Alverstoke for many years and often passed the secret Fort Monckton...

Then, in the sequel, Mission: Tehran, we learn more about Hazzard’s acquisition of the British SIS psychic HQ, Fenner House, motivated in part by the logic of Dansey:

The Georgian mansion was built in 1810 and had a chequered existence before being bought by Sir Gerald Hazzard in 1958 to establish the Psychic Institute. As a top intelligence officer in the MI6 hierarchy, he was following in the footsteps of two chiefs of the secret service – Mansfield Cumming, who often supplemented the fledgling secret service from his own pocket, and Admiral Sinclair, who bought Bletchley Park himself because he couldn’t get any funding.

Unofficially Sir Gerald had been interested in psychic research since encountering Tana as a child. However, abiding by Vera Standish’s wishes, he didn’t officially announce his friendship and interest until 1965.

Two years earlier ‘C’ had been Dick White and with his connivance, Sir Gerald had created his own particular offshoot of MI6, International Enterprises, in February, shortly after Philby flew out of Beirut for exile in Moscow. In July 1963 Sir Gerald actually set Fenner House aside for the sole use of Interprises, retaining the Psychic Institute as a convenient cover. His brief was to recruit agents who didn’t belong to any ‘old school’ – and he scoured the armed forces to that end. Inevitably, there were exceptions and he head-hunted Tana in 1965.

Changes to the interior structure of Fenner House were kept secret: the large bedroom at the west rear end was converted into a conference room and encased in a Faraday cage to prevent electronic eavesdropping. The upstairs closets and changing rooms on the north side had been converted into two separate rooms – the psychic training laboratory and the Communications Centre and a door from the latter opened into Sir Gerald’s bed-sitting room at the northeast corner which he occupied whenever he was visiting.

The servants’ quarters on the ground floor at the north side were knocked into two rooms – becoming the Gym – with its first-aid annex – and the Armoury.

***

Sitting cross-legged in the centre of the Gymnasium’s dojo, Tana maintained the yogic Sukhasana position, her arms limp and the backs of her hands resting on her bare feet. She wore a black leotard and her hair swept back in a tight bun.

This easy pose for meditation was suitable for her purposes. (Mission: Tehran, pp 178-179)

***

Mission: Prague

Available on Amazon as a paperback and e-book here

Mission: Tehran

Available on Amazon as a paperback and e-book here

Mission: Khyber

Available on Amazon as a paperback and e-book here

'Atmospheric descriptions of life under the yoke of Soviet rule'

Latest Amazon review of The Prague Papers (e-book) from reader 'Sandbagger'.

Set during the Cold War behind the Iron Curtain in the mid- 1970s the storyline follows the young, intriguing Tana Standish, a British secret agent, who was orphaned and yet managed to survive the brutality and the horrors of the Warsaw ghetto in WWII. She possesses a psychic ability that gives her an advantage but occasionally appears to be something of a double-edged sword.

Tana is called in to help repair the beleaguered underground network in Czechoslovakia, who had been stymied after the so-called Prague Spring, when the reformist First Secretary, Alexander Dubček, well meaning attempts of reform were brought to heel seven years earlier by the arrival of Soviet tanks.

This is a well-researched novel with atmospheric descriptions of life under the yoke of Soviet rule.

A real page turner. Highly recommended.

 ***

Many thanks, Sandbagger! 

The follow-up is The Tehran Text, set in Iran in 1978.

My apologies for not posting here regularly of late, but I'm moving towards the end of the third Tana Standish mission, set in Afghanistan in 1979: The Khyber Chronicle.

Absent without leave...

Sorry, I haven't been posting much lately.

At present I'm absent writing.

I'm in Afghanistan, Nimruz and Herat Province, in 1979. Time-machines are wonderful contraptions.

It's March, and a little bit on the cold side, though.

An armed confrontation is about to explode, followed by an armed insurrection. So please excuse me for a while... If I should survive, I hope to move on to Kabul eventually...

Book review plus - LIFE IN RUSSIA

Michael Binyon’s view of Russia, published in 1983 is useful for my research purposes, as I certainly wasn’t able to go there at the time (since I was serving in the RN). Binyon was a correspondent for The Times 1978-1982.

Naturally, since the wall came down in November 1989 and the USSR dissolved in December 1991, much has changed. Yet the people are probably not that different now.

The book is written with genuine warmth for the Russian people. He uses the term ‘Russian’ to simplify the fact that the USSR is a vast mixture of countries, cultures and ethnic groups. Some of the statements are prescient, though at the time of writing Binyon never conceived the breakup would occur. ‘The Soviet Union is a world of its own. But it is a world its rulers ever fear will fly apart into disparate fragments unless they keep a very tight grip.’ (p4)  Here and elsewhere, with hindsight you could easily substitute the European Union to observe strong parallels!

The recent doping scandal relating to the Olympics springs to mind when I read this entry:

 ‘Russians respect power and authority, and most have a bully’s instinct to walk all over anyone who is servile and obsequious. The best way of doing business is to make your position and determination clear from the start, negotiate toughly but politely and ensure that face is not lost…’ (p4)

And this has bearing, perhaps: ‘To a Russian, saving face is of great importance, and this Eastern characteristic colours not only individual actions but policies and attitudes in dealing with other countries. Indeed, many national policies can only be understood by reference to the Russian character.’ (p136)

For many years I was puzzled by the British trade unions’ affectionate dalliance with the USSR. Naturally, the Soviet authorities were keen to foster disruption in the West, and even suborned certain trade union members to do their bidding. Yet the picture, beyond the ‘official’ image presented to visiting union comrades was far removed from the freedoms enjoyed in the West:

‘Not one of the estimated 130 million Soviet trade unionists has ever gone on strike.’ (p27) One has not to wonder why. In 1977 a number of sacked workers got together to form an ‘independent’ union. The KGB exiled the leaders from Moscow, questioned, harassed, arrested and sent several to psychiatric hospitals. Three years later, the rise of Poland’s Solidarity movement caused Brezhnev to launch an attack on union officials for laziness and indifference to their members’ needs, turning the union leaders against their unions, using the unions to police their members in effect, for the communist cause. This was typical Russian double-think.

The union can be a deadening influence, stifling innovation, free thinking. ‘The task of the officially organised unions of artists, writers and musicians is not to promote their members’ interests, but to ensure their members stay in line.’ (p113) ‘All land in the Soviet Union is nationalised’; people can own homes, but not the land.

The propaganda had it that the country benefited from full employment. Yet there were thousands of workshy (many with false documents who have abandoned families and responsibilities). ‘Factories are only too glad when poor and disruptive workers quietly disappear. Rather than report their absence,  they allow their names to remain on the factory register, thus conveniently enabling the factory to draw state money for salaries, which are diverted straight into the management’s pockets to be used for the inevitable bribes and pay-offs.’ (p33)

I wonder how many 1980s Marxist-Leninist students would have been keen to study in the USSR. ‘University or college graduates are sent to remote villages for the obligatory two year first posting which every Soviet student faces at the end of his studies. For many, it is like banishment.’ (p196)

I was also interested to read: ‘The Academy of Medical Sciences has long been carrying out full-scale research into para-psychology, telepathy and bio-rhythms, a favourite topic of popular scientific journalism.’ (p53) See my earlier blog posts on Soviet psychic research.

Drunkenness was a big problem and accounted for absenteeism and accidental deaths, and marital and family breakdown.  ‘In the Ukraine, several mines run daily checks for inebriation among the miners as they report for work. Traffic police have also urged tougher penalties for drunken driving, which is already severely punished, and in recent years a number of people causing fatal accidents while drunk have been shot.’ (p63) Severe punishment indeed – but did it reduce the incidence of drunk driving? The book doesn’t say – and doubtless statistics were not available.

The Russians are avid readers, though found it difficult to get their hands on books (other than official tracts, presidential speeches and the like. I can’t imagine poets filling Wembley Stadium, yet Poet Andrei Voznesensky gave a reading to 80,000 people in a football stadium. ‘His latest collection was published in an edition of 200,000 and sold out immediately.’ (p109) Sales to dream about, indeed!

Voznesensky would retreat to the Georgian village of Peredelkino, south of Moscow. This is the official writers’ colony. Pasternak lived here for many years and is buried in its cemetery. Binyon spotted a man in a grey raincoat standing near the monument (to Sergei Yesenin, poet, Isadora Duncan’s lover); the man took off his hat and recited some of Yesenin’s poems. Others present clapped. This echoed in my mind – scenes from Fahrenheit 451.

Greek myths and Herodotus were best-sellers; new editions of Tolstoy sold out immediately. ‘Even during the anniversaries of Tolstoy’s birth, or Dostoyevsky’s, their works could not be found. Pushkin, Gogol hard to find…The most heavily forested country in the world has to limit its newspapers to four or six pages because of the paper shortage… painful lack of toilet paper, a commodity that has achieved an almost mystic value to those who tire of the discomfort and irony of using Pravda..’ (p170)

Surprisingly, perhaps, the Soviet press was campaigning, hard-hitting and effective, not afraid to hound racketeers and the guilty – according to the party line. Appeals in the paper Pravda could work: a resident of a village where the only shop was closed complained; a party delegation investigated and within hours a shop was opened there…

Soviet historians estimate 20 million Russians perished in The Great Patriotic War (WWII). In the Ukraine alone 20,000 villages were destroyed. ‘Even now at least half a dozen elderly people are shot each year for war crimes or collaboration with the Nazis.’ (p125)

Party members and grandmothers alike state: ‘Let there be no more war’ and the toast at every official dinner is always ‘to peace’. I’d be inclined to believe that this is still the same now; the people don’t want war, but they don’t want to be walked over either…

Binyon wrote about the little Byelorussian village of Khatyn where The Black Death SS herded 74 adults and 75 children into a barn, doused it with petrol and set it alight. One man was away at the time; Joseph Kaminski returned to find his young still alive among the charred bodies. He picked him up and the boy died in his father’s arms… a bronze statue of Kaminski carrying his dying son and staring in blank horror straight ahead stands at the entrance to Khatyn (where nobody now lives).  This is not to be confused with Katyn, where Polish officers were massacred by Stalin! (p126)

Most Russians accepted the official version of the war: it was a Russian victory over fascism, and the Soviet intervention in Manchuria forced the Japanese to surrender; there was no mention of the atomic bombs… Little or nothing was ‘said or written about the extensive American war aid, or the British convoys to Murmansk. No official memorial has been erected in that Arctic city to the allied sailors who lost their lives.’ (p127) [Since this was written, Russia pressed for the Arctic convoy veterans to be honoured with a Russian medal, but government intransigence didn’t permit it – until 2013, a year after they were belatedly presented with the British Arctic Star.]

Binyon refers to a book Through Russia on a Mustang (1891) by Thomas Stevens and offers a brief excerpt, which offers traditions, beliefs, and adventures of a witty character. It was out of print when quoted. Happily, there are several reprints available now; here’s one

There’s a brief mention of Mikhail Gorbachev, ‘the young agricultural expert in the politburo, has distanced himself from the food programme, and is presumed to have pushed for something more radical.’ (p199)

The following two passages strongly suggest the malaise that is the European Union (replace ‘communist party’ and Soviet Union with ‘EU’, perhaps: ‘The communist party is a single, monolithic organisation, and local government has only limited powers. But the Soviet Union is the world’s largest and most diverse multi-national state, and without a very firm structure and tight control at the centre, it would probably split apart into dozens of separate competing units. Regional and ethnic nationalism is strong and is growing, and despite the much-trumpeted official picture of a big, happy, harmonious family, there are tensions and quarrels beneath the surface, which are suppressed only with difficulty.’ (p206)

‘From travels in nine different republics, my impressions were strongly reinforced that the diversity and variety is such that no amount of centralisation can mould a single type of ‘Soviet man’, even if that were the aim – which increasingly is recognised as unrealistic.’ (p206) Homogenising people doesn’t work – they have their culture, belief systems, traditions and history.

Another example comes from Latvia: Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians flooded into Riga because of the higher standard of living, and brought Russification in their wake. When the non-Latvian population reached 800,000 out of a total of only 2,500,000 in all Latvia, further immigration was stopped.’ (211) Freedom of movement within the USSR (by party pressure) created an immigrant crisis.

And we’ve seen how Russia deals with the fundamentalist Islamic issue. The State’s atheism does not sit comfortably with Islam.  ‘Science and Religion said the home mosques supported social customs that were incompatible with modern social life, including blood feuds, the abduction of brides, the marriage of underage girls and polygamy…’ (p245)

This is a fascinating and thought-provoking book, a glance back in time, when the Cold War was thawing then heating up, as East and West attempted to accommodate the other, neither side wanting more global conflict. The Soviet Union could not sustain its vast empire and it took the realist Gorbachev to understand that. What followed was another completely different ball game – but throughout the period, from the time of this book to the present, the Russian people have found the changes in their lives bewildering and unsettling. Certainly, the independent states seem keen not to go back.

Weird numbers

I haven't been posting for a few days. My apologies. What is puzzling is that the daily views have been going stratospheric as compared to the times when I'm inactive. Yesterday and today they've been hitting the 300s and 400s. It seems that the big audience is Russia with 508 views yesterday and 979 today already!  Maybe they're reading the adventures of Tana Standish and trying to find out what is fact and what is fiction, even if it all 'happened' in the 1970s...!

Normal service will be resumed shortly.  In the meantime, I'm reading a non-fiction book entitled Life in Russia (1983) by Michael Binyon. Yes, more (never-ending) research.

Writing – research – Nazis – psychic-04

For the final glimpse into the book PSYCHIC DISCOVERIES BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN by Sheila Ostrander & Lynn Schroeder (1970) this copy 1976, we’ll look at the Nazis and Hitler.

It’s already been mentioned (in psychic-01 here that Hitler was a believer in the occult. A good number of authors have mined this subject, among them Dennis Wheatley, Daniel Easterman, James Twining, Graham Masterton and James Herbert.

According to this book, Czechs said the Nazi movement was deeply involved with the black arts. Hitler was born in Braunau Inn in Austria, a town long famous for the large number of mediums it produced (including Willy Schneider, who had the same wet nurse as Hitler!)

Apparently, Hitler was trained in mediumship by Prof Haushofer of the University of Munich. (See The Morning of the Magicians).

One man who fought Nazism was Stefan Ossowiecki (1877-1944). He was a telepathist, clairvoyant, and could resort to astral projection. He helped the underground during the war, giving information on lost and imprisoned people. Holding a scrap of clothing, he was able to reveal where victims had been executed, and where they were buried.

Documented accounts speak of him locating specific bodies in mass graves layered with the dead.

On the day of Warsaw Uprising, he was killed by the Nazis; his body was never found, as he predicted.

***

From time to time, Tana Standish crossed paths with Nazis – bearing in mind that she was active in the 1970s and 1980s.

One nasty Nazi was Dr Wolf Schneider, who was born in 1920. He was responsible for torturing Tana in Czechoslovakia in 1975 (The Prague Papers). He didn’t employ black magic, just plain evil shock electric shock treatment. He was later recruited by Spetsnaz officer Aksakov in The Tehran Text mission.

Tana was not versed in astral projection, though she was learning to harness remote viewing - which is another subject worthy of comment in a later blog. Aided by recourse to bio-feedback, she used this in a haunting and poignant scene in The Tehran Text.

Tana Standish can be found in The Prague Papers and TheTehran Text.