THE HUMAN FACTOR - Book review

Graham Greene’s 1978 novel The Human Factor is a gripping and believable story about spies without gunfire and hectic action, but plenty of suspense, tension, intrigue and perfect characterisation. 

Maurice Castle is an aging agent in MI6, working in the African section with a younger man, Davis. His new boss is Daintry who has been brought in to review various sections as a leak is suspected. Castle was previously deployed in apartheid South Africa where he fell in love with one of his black agents, Sarah. When his relationship was about to become an embarrassment he fled with her, aided by local Communist Carson. Now working in London, Castle is married to Sarah and has adopted her young boy fathered by another.

Gradually, as the investigation into the supposed leak ensues, suspicions fall upon young Davis… It would be unreasonable to reveal more.

The sleight-of-hand of the people involved, such as C himself, Sir John Hargreaves, and the firm’s creepy doctor Percival provide suspense and tension. The arrival of Cornelius Muller, a powerful man in South Africa’s BOSS, assigned to liaise with Castle on the secret operation Uncle Remus adds drama, since Muller had known Castle in South Africa. Loyalties are questioned; everything is not what it seems; and the morality of Castle’s seniors are decidedly dubious. All the characters are rounded, and seemingly flawed – that is, very human.

Intriguingly, Davis, a tippler, tends to mix his whiskies, notably White Horse and Johnnie Walker: ‘You know, this blend of mine tastes quite good. I shall call it a White Walker. There might be a fortune in the idea – you could advertise it with the picture of a beautiful ghost…’(p66) I wonder if George R. R. Martin stumbled on that moniker when creating his Game of Thrones (1996)?

Greene wanted to get away from the violence and action depicted in popular espionage fiction; in his experience the real thing was more down-to-earth, though doubtless treacherous, and slightly sleazy. After attending a funeral, Daintry has a drink or two with a few people he’d met at Sir John’s house party. Daintry is quizzed about his work: ‘one of those hush-hush boys. James Bond and all that.’ Another states ‘I never could read those books by Ian.’ Another reckons the books were ‘too sexy for me. Exaggerated’ (p165).

This is a book about sacrifice, disillusionment, and love. Greene’s eye for detail, the telling mannerisms, and the secret world’s manipulation of people are laid bare, uncomfortably so. This is as good as any John Le Carré novel.

Editorial note

We writers are advised not to use character names that begin with the same letter or seem or sound similar. I can’t see why Greene was fixated on similarities of names: Castle and Carson. Then there was another ‘c’ – Cynthia, the secretary Davis pines for. Not that it affected the story at all. So much for advice to writers, hm?

Book review - Legacy

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

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

Legacy is interesting, though flawed.

There are three narrative strands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book review - The Day Of Creation

For many years I’ve admired the science fiction works of J.G. Ballard, but I’d never got around to reading his non-sf novel The Day Of Creation (1987). I have now corrected that oversight.

The story is narrated by Dr Mallory, who is working for the WHO in an unnamed central African republic, near the River Kotto, yet on the edge of the encroaching Sahara. Inevitably, political and native unrest has overtaken him and the villagers in the guise of General Harare and his guerrillas. Mallory is about to be executed when the arrival of Captain Kagwa and his government troops rout the terrorists.

Shortly afterwards, as a landing strip is being bulldozed by Kagwa’s men, a huge tree is uprooted and water gushes out from the new hole. It doesn’t stop, but steadily floods the area, moving over the land. The blessing of this fresh water’s arrival affects Mallory strangely; he christens the new river with his name. Together with a twelve-year-old girl guerrilla he calls Noon, he escapes from Kagwa and commandeers a boat to head up the new river to find its source. Before long, he is also accompanied by a myopic filmmaker and his assistant.

We’re soon in the territory of an unreliable narrator. Perhaps the first clue is naming the ‘river’ after himself.  ‘The River Mallory. I felt a curious pride. Yet knowing that it  bore my name made me all the more determined to destroy it.’ (p71)  He attempted to defeat the river at the place of its ‘mouth’ but failed, so realised he must find its source in the mountains. Yet, ambivalently, ‘I was eager to see how it would grow and change.’ (p99)

Over time, the river becomes polluted with the rubbish from civilization – fridges, bottles, condoms, and the usual detritus found in a Ballard disaster novel: ‘the aerosol can and the hair-dryer, lying in the sand like objects displayed in a museum of consumer archaeology’ (p220). Is the River Mallory a metaphor for something? Maybe: man creates, then spoils, sullies and ultimately destroys?

Ballard writes ‘literary’ novels – presumably books with profound psychological depth, a message and telling metaphors. Here, there are metaphors on virtually every page. A few are strained, such as ‘I stared at the sleek swollen surface of the river, like the fleshy body of a sleeping woman’ (p112), but the majority tend to work.

Here are a few of his many metaphors:

‘Fires burned fiercely across the surface of the lake, the convection currents sending up plumes of jewelled dust that ignited like the incandescent tails of immense white peacocks.’ (p20)

‘Angry voices crossed the airstrip, an altercation that moved like a skidding stylus from French to German to Sudanese.’ (p50)

‘… cadavers in the dissection room, laid out on the glass tables like the forgotten patrons of a Turkish bath who had waited too long for physicians…’ (p70)

‘The trees leaned over the water, their roots exposed like chandeliers…’ (p92)

‘The huge trees advanced towarfds the water like an army of knights…’ (p92)

‘Hours had slipped by in seconds, falling like dust through the open grilles of my mind.’ (p106)

‘Two metal aircraft hangars stood in the grass, their curved, pockmarked roofs like the hulls of collapsed Zeppelins.’ (p224)

It’s interesting that in one point Mallory refers to Noon as a teenager, yet she isn’t; she’s twelve, pre-pubescent. She is often naked, diving for fish to feed them on their journey up-river, and Mallory seems to lust after her, though whether anything happens in fact is debatable as he becomes disoriented by disease and malnutrition. Bordering on unsavoury territory, here, perhaps.

There are moments of humour, when Noon attempts to learn English by listening to cassette tapes, though these are all Marxist indoctrination lessons for Captain Kagwa! ‘Exploitation!’ becomes her word of warning of danger.

Ballard’s lush description of the jungle and the ‘dream river’, aided by rich metaphor create good visuals, though the characters seem less substantial than the environment, perhaps because they’re translated through the fragile sanity of the narrator. Imagery supplants plot; Ballard’s imagination is seen to be formidable through his revealing prose.

Christmas with the Crooked Cats - 'Leroy and the camel'

Today, the Crooked Cat author is Vanessa Couchman, with a non-PC short story about a store's put-upon 'Father Christmas'...

http://vanessacouchmanwriter.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/leroy-and-the-camel-a-short-story-for-christmas/

Vanessa's latest book from Crooked Cat is The House at Zaronza:

Blurb. The past uncovered. Rachel Swift travels to Corsica to discover more about her forebears. She comes across a series of passionate love letters and delves into their history. The story unfolds of a secret romance at the start of the 20th century between a village schoolteacher and Maria, the daughter of a bourgeois family. Maria's parents have other plans for her future, though, and she sees her dreams crumble. Her life is played out against the backdrop of Corsica, the 'island of beauty', and the turmoil of World War I. This is a story about love, loss and reconciliation in a strict patriarchal society, whose values are challenged as the world changes. Love gained and lost.

Published in July this year, the book has already picked up 17 very good reviews.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/House-at-Zaronza-Vanessa-Couchman/dp/190984182X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418920768&sr=1-1&keywords=vanessa+couchman

Film of the book: The Constant Gardener

As yesterday’s book release Catalyst is about a fictional pharmaceutical company, Cerberus, and Catherine Vibrissae’s vendetta against its head, it seems appropriate to look at another work about pharmas: The Constant Gardener.

This is a faithful adaptation of John Le Carré’s novel and, even with the constant flash-backs, it delivers.  The 2001 book was an angry indictment of certain pharmas – big pharmaceutical companies - and their dubious practices in getting drugs tested and approved.  Since then, certain controls have been put in place yet somewhere we can be sure that poor people are still being used without their consent as drug-testing guinea-pigs.  Not all pharmas are wicked.  But the one in The Constant Gardener definitely is.

The music matches the haunting and ravishing views of Africa and was composed by the Spaniard Alberto Iglesias.

The film starts in Kenya with the off-screen murder of Tess (Oscar winning Rachel Weisz), the campaigning wife of diplomat Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes).  Normally, I don’t like stories that begin with a major character’s murder and then persist in giving us flash-backs, but it worked well in the book and it does in the film too. 

Tess was an activist-humanitarian working with African physician Arnold Bluhm (Herbert Kounde). She upset the tightly-knit diplomatic community with her passion for speaking out, particularly against Three Bees Pharmaceutical which ostensibly provides jobs, aid and money. 

The quiet widower, Quayle, slowly digs around the edges of his late wife’s past and unearths uncomfortable mysteries and a few home truths.  Fiennes’s performance is understated and is particularly moving when he finally breaks down in his garden to weep for his lost love.

If this had been a Hollywood film, doubtless Quayle would have gone out for vengeance with a gun or two. Instead, he simply pokes around, unsettling the hidden powers behind the shadowy pharmaceutical company, including Sir Bernard Pellegrin (Bill Nighy) who is in the Pharma’s pocket and just happens to be Quayle’s boss at the Foreign Office. 

It’s an unnerving film, because it tells us that, unless things change radically, the beautiful continent of Africa is doomed by commercial greed and despotism. Nothing new there, then. Worse, though, the incidence of tuberculosis is increasing and will spread into Europe as the mass migration of illegal immigrants continues; prophetic, it seems, since that is the case now in UK. Yes, there is hope, but it is slim. The ending, for me, was unsatisfying, which was the same emotional response I gleaned from the book.  See this powerful and at times emotional film, by all means, but it isn’t really entertainment as the message dominates too much.

Le Carré can get away with switching tense and POV because he’s such a good writer. Within a short space of time, the reader is immersed in his characters’ worlds. I haven’t yet read all his books, but I’ve read the majority, including all of the spy novels. For me, outside his spy fiction, The Night Manager is one of his suspenseful best. Still, you’d be hard-pressed to find a bad Le Carré book; it is soon to be filmed as a TV series.

***

Note: You can read about my fictional pharma, Cerberus Worldwide, in my ‘Avenging Cat’ thriller series, beginning with Catalyst.

 

Amazon UK e-book here

Amazon COM e-book here

Paperbacks are also available at a good price!

Or try getting the paperback from The Book Depository post-free worldwide!

 

 

Blog Guest - Robin Moreton - historian and author of erotic thrillers

Today, my blog guest is Robin Moreton, the penname of the author of Assignment Kilimanjaro, an erotic thriller set in the First World War. A while ago it struck me that it might be a novel idea to interview other writing Mortons from time to time. My first interview was with Alison Morton in May this year and can be found here and I've downloaded her books Inceptio, Perfiditas, and Successio. Also, I’ve recently downloaded four books – Mrs Jones, Molly Brown, Wildewood Revenge, and Bedlam by B.A. Morton, who has a strong following. As far as I know, she is not a relative, either.

Q & A

Interesting to meet you, namesake!

Thanks for inviting me, Nik.

I’ve got several books by other Mortons; coincidentally one of them, Babs Morton comes from the north-east, my neck of the woods! Where do you hail from, Robin?

It’s a small world. Hampshire, England. I think my forebears come from the north of England, but it’s a long time ago since they moved south – I think it was just after the Jarrow marches…

Erotic fiction is almost respectable these days. As this is your first foray into fiction, having previously settled on writing history books, why were you drawn to erotic fiction?

Well, it’s partial fiction, in my view, since I’m rather the official narrator for Tilda Cuve-Banks. Tilda’s record of her exploits – or that may even be sexploits! – were acquired by my agent. She’s mysterious regarding the provenance of ‘the packages’, as she calls them. Anyway, my agent knew of my interest in the period, which is also the time that Tilda operated, and felt I could perhaps put a modern spin on the yarns. Tilda was certainly ahead of her time in many respects. It’s a myth that the Victorians and Edwardians were afraid of sex. In fact, many revelled in it, and particularly enjoyed writing and reading about it.

Tilda was a spy for the British. How many missions did she go on?

The current batch of papers give details of three – East Africa, the Balkans, and Turkey. My agent is being close-lipped regarding the possibility of any more ‘packages’…

So Kilimanjaro might not be a one-off?

That depends on the readers. If enough clamoured for more, I’d be happy to sift through those papers again and write a sequel. I have plenty of non-fiction projects to occupy me until that time arrives.

The story seems to show a strong affinity for Africa. Is this something you picked up from Tilda?

 
Partly. She has a wonderful turn of phrase, but some of her pages are merely notes and observations. I was already in love with Africa, actually. I was fortunate enough to visit the continent on several occasions. This fulfilled a long held ambition of mine, as I’d been brought up on a diet of the books by H Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Me, too! Sorry, go on…

 
Well, I visited Mombasa, where some of Assignment Kilimanjaro is set, as well as Bahrain and South Africa. The continent does tend to get in your blood, in your heart. History fascinates me, naturally, and that’s why writing about it is my first love.
 
Even so, I’d always wanted to write a sexy adventure about a strong woman. You know, there were many brave and intrepid women explorers who defied convention in the 1800s and travelled the ‘dark continent’. These Tilda papers seemed like a dream come true. I was doubly pleased to be able to go back to the time of the First World War in east Africa, a neglected period.

Assignment Kilimanjaro is a heady mix of fact and fiction, it seems to me. How much is fact?

Often, I found that I had to extrapolate from Tilda’s notes at certain points. Yes, she definitely did meet the real historical characters that keep cropping up. Winston Churchill, the heroic Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, and spymaster Mansfield Smith-Cumming, for example. In that respect it’s a variation on the Flashman books, though Tilda is no coward – quite the opposite.

I like the realism you’ve injected. I must admit I tend to think of Tilda as reminiscent of Modesty Blaise.

Yes, only with much more sex. In some ways she resembles the wartime comic strip Jane, who always seemed to lose her clothes yet raise the morale of the troops…

Yes, I recall that some commentators said that the more clothes Jane lost, the more morale rose in the troops! What else have you written?

I’ve also written a non-Tilda erotic short story set in the American Civil War – ‘The Corporal’s Punishment’, published by Xcite Books. It's a play on words and is featured in a collection of erotic stories here by four other Xcite authors. My other works are academic, non-fiction, and written under a different penname.

 

Why use a penname?

While I’m not fazed by the nature of this type of book, it’s quite possible that in the academic field my reputation, such as it is, could unwittingly be affected. That’s why I haven’t provided you with an author photograph!

 
I would certainly caution any potential reader, that if you’re offended by graphic sex descriptions, then sorry, but this book isn’t for you. Not the best of sales pitches, I know, but I want to be up-front about that. Bad choice of words there, perhaps?
 
Not at all…
 
My publisher, Accent Press – under the imprint Xcite Books – is offering Assignment Kilimanjaro in a free iTunes offer for October, ending on the 31^st . Amazon may also Price Match this offer. If you could promote this offer that would be great! All this week it has been in the top 20 on Amazon. Here is the iTunes link:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/assignment-kilimanjaro/id546634091?ls=1&mt=11

Thank you, Robin!

Excerpt

ASSIGNMENT KILIMANJARO

 

PART ONE – TILDA GOES DOWN IN THE JUNGLE

 

Chapter 1: A memorable flight

 

Lake Amboseli, British East Africa – February, 1915

‘You seem pleased to see me,’ she said. Good heavens, she thought, he certainly fills his khaki shorts! So the gentleman dresses on the right. ‘My name’s Tilda Cuve-Banks. What is yours?’

            ‘Hal Denby,’ he replied, the slight warm breeze ruffling his dark-brown hair and the short sleeves of his sweat-patched shirt. A careworn brown leather belt supported a sheathed knife, a belt of .45 ACP cartridges and a holstered pistol – it looked like a Colt M1911. His shorts came to a couple of inches above his knees. Nice, sturdy knees, too; his legs were deeply tanned and very muscular and covered in quite a few old scars. Socks round his ankles and tough worn boots ensured he could travel in any terrain.

Denby’s dark left eyebrow arched and his steel-grey eyes roved over her. ‘Is that Mrs Cuve-Banks, then?’ His quick darting eyes had noted her wedding ring.

She nodded her head. ‘Yes,’ she said but had no intention of explaining that Lord Quentin Banks, her young husband of four weeks, had died in the trenches. Even in these war-torn times, it usually felt safer if travelling as a married woman.

He smiled, the mouth thin and a little on the cruel side, she thought. Judging by the tumescence in the right leg of his shorts, he seemed to like what he saw.

            Tilda was as tall as he was, though high-heeled lace-up white kid boots aided her in this. She wore a long-sleeved white chiffon dress with a high collar, the bodice decorated with white beads. As she stood there, her bulging leather briefcase in one hand, her other hand clamping the white pith hat on her head, he could just distinguish the tanned flesh contours of her legs and arms as the light wind blew off the lake against her. Tilda’s dark auburn hair was tied in a chignon but already wisps had broken free and fluttered around her elegant neck and high cheekbones.

            He took her hand and shook it. His grip was firm, as was hers. He let go and turned to look at the biplane that bounced on the water of the rippling lake; its fuselage was tethered alongside a long thin jetty made up of wooden planks on sturdy thick piles of tree trunks. A man – probably the pilot – was tinkering in the front cockpit.

Denby frowned dubiously at the patched canvas and repaired struts and dangling rigging wires and gestured at the seaplane. ‘We seem to be fellow passengers,’ he said in an ominous tone.

            Ignoring his statement of the obvious, Tilda checked out her immediate surroundings.

Tied to the other side of the jetty was a small fishing boat. Four Africans were unloading wooden boxes of fish; she could smell them from here – men and fish. Behind her was a mud-spattered Ford box-truck, already half full with fish and other produce. Four mules were tethered beside the vehicle; the rich smell of manure and the perpetual buzz of flies also carried to her on the breeze.

The fishermen and farmers would get a fair price for the food, she knew. All to help the war effort against the Prussian Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.

As she hadn’t responded to Denby, he tried again: ‘Are you going all the way?’

‘I always do,’ she replied, her light blue eyes flashing suggestively as he jerked round and studied her.

Assignment Kilimanjaro (Xcite Books, an imprint of Accent Press)

 

from Amazon UK here 

from Amazon COM here

 

Note: Apparently, Robin started a blog for Tilda but hasn't had time to add to it; for what it's worth, it is here 

 

 

FFB - Mission

If you enjoyed Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet, I suspect that you’ll like Mission by Philip Spires too. The Jewel in the Crown was about a lot of things, but essentially a rape and how that affects a number of interlinked individuals. Mission covers a great deal in 1970s Kenya, but is essentially about a death and how the lives of several people are entwined. The writing style is similar, too. Another author Spires favourably reminds me of is Louis Bromfield, especially his classic The Rains Came.

 

The man killed is Munyasya, a retired army officer who devoted his life to his colonial masters. The book is divided into five sections, related from the viewpoints of Michael, Mulonzya, Janet, Boniface and Munyasya. Time shifts from the instant of the death to the past and also forward to the present, showing the incident’s repercussions. As Michael says, some thirty years later, ‘Sometimes things happen to you in life which are so momentous, so mind-blowing, that you never forget them. You live with them forever, vivid and clear in your mind. It’s as if you can relive them moment-by-moment.’

We begin with the death. Father Michael, a mission priest, accidentally drives his vehicle over the ageing Munyasa, who is a derelict and a drunk. Yet the old man’s demise galvanizes the local politician James Mulonzya into making political capital from the tragedy. Father Michael’s blooding occurred earlier in Biafra, and his quite shocking memories are powerfully described. Now, officiating in the village of Migwani, he strives to do good and has a dedicated helper, Boniface. Michael finds himself in conflict with many folk who prefer the ‘old ways’ and is openly accused by Mulonzya of politicising school lessons. Michael is a staunch friend of Janet Rowlandson, a volunteer working there for two years.

James Mulonzya is not only at loggerheads with Father Michael. He is against the efforts of John Mwangangi, who has returned from UK to his homeland to improve the lot of Migwani farmers. John has a wife, Lesley, who prefers the city life of Nairobi rather than that of the village. John’s problems are manifold: he becomes distant to his wife, he is too absorbed in the village project, and he cannot easily get on with his old father, Musyoka, with tragic consequences.

We meet Janet thirty years after the death of old Munyasa when she is a headmistress of a girls’ school in London and by chance she encounters someone from her past, a past that is not buried far beneath the surface because of what she witnessed. While in Kenya, she embarked on an affair with John Mwangangi, but it was destined to end when her two years were up… Here, in Janet’s school life we are treated to some wonderful one-liners – ‘… middle class families who could do without patronising advice about their diet from a politician with certainly questionable morals.’ And a truism: ‘… knowing a language was not the same as teaching it…’ The mannered meal with guests and her family is splendidly done, with telling flashbacks and surprises and a marvellous put-down for her husband, David.

 
Boniface showed much promise as a young man and was destined for the church. Unfortunately, he allowed hubris to dominate him and fell foul of his father who had scrimped and saved to further Boniface’s education. The family rift was merely the beginning, however, as Boniface becomes involved with Josephine. Later, Boniface and Josephine are beholden to Father Michael for giving blood that saved their child’s life. Fate decrees otherwise, however, as the child later becomes ill and Michael makes an abortive mad dash to the hospital.
 
Munyasya gained his education and experience from the King’s African Rifles. A respected officer in his day, he was ousted when Kenya gained independence. He was seen as a traitor to his people, more interested in adopting a European name and lifestyle. Single and without issue, he descended into a schizophrenic life where his dead stepfather talked to him and he mumbled back incomprehensively. He developed the habit of tying pieces of string to his thumb as reminders of things he’d never remember, then the string seemed to be a part of him, at times sloughed off and renewed like a snake’s skin. ‘It was a fool trying to untie another fool’s knot.’ This phrase is echoed in the title of Spires’s second novel, A Fool’s Knot, which examines in more detail the life and death of John Mwangangi. At this point we discover the real reason why Munyasya died under the wheels of Father Michael’s car.
 
Despite the events being trodden over by several people, there’s always something fresh to discover, a new insight into a character, a shocking revelation, and even though you think you know everything already, you read on, wanting to understand the individuals and their inner worlds, and still learn more.
 
The narrative is coloured by the sights and smells of a small town in Africa, the petty tribal disagreements and the long-lasting resentment of past ignominies under colonial rule. It is not a light read, but it is rewarding. It’s obvious that these characters lived with Spires for several years, he knows them so well, and by the end of the book, we do too. A memorable and quite remarkable book.

***

His second book A Fool’s Knot reacquaints us with some of the characters in Mission.

 

 

Book signing for Sudden Vengeance

Today, I'm signing my books at The Book Shop, High Street, Lee on the Solent, Hampshire, England.

Between 12 noon and 2pm.

 

 

So if you're in the vicinity, please drop in!

The books I'm signing are Sudden Vengeance, Spanish Eye and Blood of the Dragon Trees.

Sudden Vengeance is a crime novel set in the Hampshire south coast town of Alverbank and is about a vigilante; Spanish Eye covers 22 cases of half-English, half-Spanish private eye Leon Cazador, 'in his own words'; Blood of the Dragon Trees is a romantic thriller set in Tenerife, involving trade in human trafficking and endangered species.

Joining me will be Jane Bwye, fellow Crooked Cat Publishing author of Breath of Africa, which is a romantic mystery set in 1950s-1960s Kenya. 

 

***

The proprietor of the Book Shop is Rick Barter, who became proprietor of in November 2004. He is originally from America. He grew up in New York City, although his family is from Maine. He has degrees from Tufts University in Massachusetts, The Sorbonne in Paris, and The University of Wales in Aberystwyth.

After a brief spell in retail sales (at Alexanders and Bloomingdales department stores in New York City), Rick began a 20-year career as an international educator and librarian, working at schools in New York, Austria, Spain, Lebanon, and the UK. In addition to articles in the professional journals, he has contributed to two books about multiculturalism and multilingualism. In addition to reading (!), Rick's interests include travel, architecture and design, and the performing arts. He speaks good French, decent German, laughable Spanish, and a smattering of Arabic. He divides his time between Lee-on-the-Solent and London.

Doris Lessing - R.I.P.

Doris Lessing, the Nobel prize-winning author of The Golden Notebook, among more than 50 other novels, has died at her London home aged 94.

Fifty books is an achievement, but it’s for the breadth of the work that she should be measured: novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer. She was able to cross genres with relative ease.

The first novel of hers I read happened to be her debut, The Grass Is Singing (1950), an unflinching powerful account of colonial Africa.

Her most popular novel sequence or series was Children of Violence – Martha Quest, A Proper Marriage, A Ripple from the Storm, Landlocked and The Four-Gated City.

She was equally at home with short stories – and wrote many – and science fiction, with her 5-book series, the Canopus in Argos Archives; two of the latter were adapted for the opera by Philip Glass and Lessing wrote the librettos. A number of her books were filmed, including the dystopian Memoirs of a Survivor.


Mischievously, in 1984 she wrote two novels under the penname Jane Somers and they were initially turned down by her own publisher. She hadn't told them she was the author. ''I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.' If the books had come out in my name, they would have sold a lot of copies and reviewers would have said, 'Oh, Doris Lessing, how wonderful.'" They were published, eventually, showing that her writing skill won through past the gatekeepers. Under the pseudonym, the two books achieved instant remainder status, selling around 3,000 and 1,500 copies respectively. Of course when she came clean, their sales were a different story. Reminds anyone of J.K. Rowling?
She was born in Iran, brought up in the African bush in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia, as was) – where her first novel was set. She was a London resident for over fifty years.

She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature when she was 88, in 2007.