Another year, another list.. 😏| Book |
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Better known for his historical and spy fiction, this is a non-fiction analysis of German armoured operational doctrine from the rise of Hitler to the fall of France.. Written a fair while ago, Deighton had a lot of advice, comment and input from (ex Wehrmacht General) Nehring backed up by the outputs from a lot of interviews and discussions with French civilians and military from the time.. it's a kind of "Blitzkrieg for Dummies" (and I mean that in a good way!) as he covers all aspects of the birth of the Panzer Divisions, Guderian's role, the technology, and how basically Blitzrieg was a one shot weapon that could only have ever worked in the specific political/geographic and organisational period that existed in early/mid 1940.. old, but still gold.. | 9 |
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Prompted by a suggestion from a mate of mine, who had started watching the TV series on Apple, and then tried the books which he said were even better than the TV series... Slow Horses, the nickname for the members of Mi5 working from Slough House, which is a decrepit building in a not very nice part of London, where agents who gave disgraced themselves, or mucked up, in some way are sent to be forgotten - far from the central circles of interesting work at main HQ. People sent to Sliugh Hiuse are given the most mundane work they can be found, with the expectation that in the end they'll give up and retire saving Mi5 the cost of redundancy - yet despite that, they are trained agents, and do find "proper" work to do... | |
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Having introduced the team in the last book, this gives Herron the opportunity to develop them in this one and as a result the book is much better - we begin to find out more details on each of the inhabitants, and after the shocking deaths of a couple in the last book we get some new characters in this one which is based on the premise of a long defunct sleeper cell, or is it?? | |
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One of the Slow Horses, Catherine Standish, is kidnapped and held hostage by an old acquaintance from her alcoholic days. Jackson and the rest of the team need to find her before anything dreadful happens, but they also need to find out why she has been snatched. Power plays at the head of the security service may be the answer - with a new Home Secretary in the Boris Johnson mould looking to side track the current head of the Service. Wheels within wheels... | |
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Start of a four-book series set during the Napoleonic Wars, about the young and idealistic Lieutenant Oliver Anson - in this book starting out as the second Lieutenant on a Royal Navy frigate he is sent on a cutting out mission that fails badly, and he is captured. His family, believing him dead, install a memorial tablet in their church to commemorate his life and service to King and country. In fact, he was only wounded badly, and along with a couple of fellow ship mates, seeks to escape from occupied France and return to England. Having successfully done this however, the Admiralty then tell him there are no sea going posts available, and because he was thought dead his old post has been filled. The only job going is a land-based one, in charge of the Fencibles tasked with foiling any potential French invasion attempt along the Kent coastline - like a Napoleonic Dad's Army. | |
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This one goes back in time to an earlier stage in Anson's career - and is about the mutinies at Spithead and especially the Nore in 1797. Anson is awaiting transfer to duties aboard a frigate in the Mediterranean but any ideas of idleness while he waits are swept aside when he is ordered to travel to Portsmouth with papers he later finds, contain the confirmation that the sailors demands have been met. A further mission to Kent (to the Nore) with similar papers is delayed, and along the way he is attacked by someone attempting to steal them. The mutiny at the Nore continues and threatens to turn for the worse with mutineers planning to blockade London or hand their ships over to the French. | |
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Chronologically this follows on directly from the first book - following his escape from France, Anson is appointed to command the Seagate Sea Fencibles. The commodore has implied that there may be a clandestine nature to Anson's new duties as he has proven himself able to survive behind enemy lines as a s result of his escape... After the successful capture of a raiding French privateer by the Fencibles, Anson is ordered to attend the funeral of a French prisoner which turns out to be faked in order to allow said prisoner to undertake a secret mission with him to France to reconnoitre Boulogne for a planned raid by Nelson. | |
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The Peace of Amiens has resulted in a temporary cessation of hostilities on the big stage, but the Fencibles, now disbanded, find themselves helping a village to resist the demands of a local smuggling gang. Elsewhere, Anson and his friends are on a holiday (with a bit of surveillance on the side) to Paris. As expected, the Peace is very short lived, and Anson yet again finds himself having to escape from a hostile France. | |
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A real page turner, but in a "unfolding car crash" kind of way..
the story f not one but a number of British Traitors, but the one of the
title was Walter Purdy, a Merchant Navy officer, who made propaganda
broadcasts and acted as an informer for the Nazis. He was a pre-War
Mosley-ite, a Fascist, described, after the War by a work colleague, as
being “as crafty as a shit-house rat”. Every bit as treacherous as Joyce
(Lord Haw Haw) with whom he worked, and John Amery, both of whom were
hanged; and of Thomas Cooper (who bragged abut saving the Nazis bullets
by throwing Jews from tall buildings), and who like Purdy, unbelievably
was not sentenced to death. Purdy was sent to Colditz as a stool-pigeon by the Germans, but was found out, court-martialled, and sentenced to hang but nobody would hang him in cold blood so the prisoners sent him back to the Germans who he promptly told all about the tunnels and a cache containing a camera and Reichmarks. Later he joined the Britische Frei Korps (an SS unit made up of British citizens). MI9 were aware of all of this as a result of coded messages from their own people in the camps - most noticeably by the undisputed hero's of the incident, firstly double agent John ‘Busty’ Brown. A battery quartermaster, he had received training from MI9 in how to carry out clandestine activities after capture. Brown had fostered relations with the German guards by bartering Red Cross luxuries. In return, he was allowed on unescorted visits to nearby foreign labour camps, and was permitted to write an article about life in a German PoW camp that was warmly received by Joseph Goebbels’s office of propaganda and all the time working for the British! The other hero was Scottish , army dentist, Julius Green, despite the constant fear of being found out, and also being found out to be Jewish, Green devised a form of invisible ink from chemicals the Germans had given him to carry out his dental procedures, which helped him send messages back to London. Amazing book, but deals in the seamier side of the Nazi "dream".. |
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The eight book in the Thomas Blackstone series set in the Hundred Years
War.. Thomas is an archer, risen from the ranks and knighted, and eventually made Edward's, the Black Prince, Master of War. Responsible for advising both the King and the Prince on all matters tactical and strategic - in this book, it is 1367 - England is allied with King Peter of Castile, who is at war with his half-brother Count Henry of Trastámara. Peter is an odious little man - and Blackstone is soon at loggerheads, but they are triumphant at the battle of Battle of Nájera, also known as the Battle of Navarrete. In chronological terms the book is set at just before the peak of English success in the Hundred Years War .. there are clear signs that the war is beginning to turn against them.. very good.. |
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Hot on the heels of my visit to the Royal Navy Submarine museum in Gosport where I read about this sub skipper in one of the displays I immediately decided to buy this in Kindle when I saw how damn cheap it was... what an astonishing book - the wartime autobiography of Edward "Teddy" Young, one of the first RNVR officers to go through the submarine command school, and who then subsequently skippered a couple of submarines in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and in the Far East at the end of the war.. very understated, but the guy won the DSO and two DSC's - riveting first hand account of war time life in the submarine service - you can see how much this influenced the Harry Gilmour fictional series.. | |
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At a loose end after the submarine auto biography I found this in my Kindle library - which I must have bought as a recommendation from one of the guys in the Patrick O'Brian Appreciation Facebook page. It's OK.. bit Boys Own with sex added in, but the story rolls along nicely, and is all the better for being set in the Royal Navy of Charles II time rather than the more popular Napoleonic period.. | |
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Cracking (old) pamphlet written and published in the 1980's about my current little local history project.. the only reason this isn't a ten is because I would have liked even more detail then the excellent detail the author provides.. very much recommended, but you'll have to get lucky on eBay like I did, as this is long out of print | |
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#41 in the series - Maigret investigates the death of a man wearing pea green shoes who has been stabbed in an alley - along the way we discover that the victim was living a double life, and the significance of the shoes becomes more poignant.. | |
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Quite a strange thing this one.. almost more documentary than fiction..
but anyway a novelisation of the Dam Busters raid, 'Operation Chastise'.
Radcliffe is an awesome story teller and this is the story of a
fictional pilot flying with 617 squadron on the raid.. the flying
sequences are unbelievably good, also the background to him and his
family and loved ones.. but Radcliffe's having to do that within the
confines of an actual event.. having read Hasting's book on the
operation just last year there was a lot of deja vu, though to his
credit Radcliffe wrote this 10 years before the Hastings book, when, I
would suggest, the questions about the horrible losses and the efficacy
of the raids were not so prevalent.. good read.. but read it
before the Hastings book.. 😀 |
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Forsyth classic... I love the way he tells multiple stories and then cunningly weaves them all together to make the final story. Anyway - grandson of a rich industrialist is killed while doing aid work in Bosnia during the troubles, and Grandfather starts calling in favours to find out who did it, and the people who do him favours call in their favours, and so a disparate bunch of ordinary people, and one amazing guy, come together to pursue justice... OK, it's not Day of the Jackal, or Dogs of War, but it is very good.. | |
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I like Sam Llewellyn - he's another story teller - not many people have heard of him regrettably, but he writes thrillers, set against the world of sailing or yachts... so you can see why I like him! A cargo of whiskey is stolen, but who has stolen it as there seem to be multiple possible culprits, and most of them seem to speak with Russian accents.. excellent | |
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I was passing a charity shop the other day and they had the hardback of this in the window and I thought "I must read that again!" - shop wasn't open so this was a crafty Kindle purchase. Maclean wrote some classic 60's/70's thrillers, Guns of Navarrone, Where Eagles Dare etcetc, all of which have dated well and remain cracking reads.. this one is more contemporary and unfortunately it suffers from just the sheer dated'ness of it... it's a good story, but not up to the standards of his other books... | |
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Two men are found dead, dressed in suits, and floating around on the sea in an inflatable boat - no identification, but they have clearly been murdered, and then dressed after the event. Wallander is tasked with finding out who did it, but first he needs to find out who they are - then a break leads him to a joint investigation with a police detective from Latvia. I like Wallander, he is a very human character, chock full of doubts, inadequacies, concerns about his health, his life, his family, but despite that absolutely driven to solve crimes of any kind.. very good.. | |
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My reader will know that Dick Francis is my secret addiction.. 😏 A newly published but impoverished author is retained to ghost write the biography of a well known race horse trainer - from a position of mutual distrust, driven by need the two are thrown together. It's only a matter of time until the writer starts to also investigate the cause of a murder loosely associate with the trainer, and then anther girl is discovered, and then the writers life is in danger.. cracking read! |
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No. 4 in the Slow Horses series.. a sombre story this one, River's Grandfather is developing dementia, or is he?? When someone comes knocking on his door one night he kills them and then goes on the run until Jackson Lamb steps in, finds him, finds out what he knows about who is trying to kill him and why, and then exacts retribution via River and the rest of the Slow Horses team. Good stuff! | |
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The first Vera Stanhope novel, so a bit of an introduction - you can't help seeing Brenda Blethyn in your minds eye when you read it, and kudos to her, her portrayal is very close to the Vera in the book.. three female environmentalists are living in a remote cottage, doing a survey for a controversial local quarry development - then people start dying, including one of them - who is doing it? A page turner for sure.. | |
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See blog review [clicky].. | |
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What a thought invoking book this must have been for it's time (1947) but hugely typical of Shute's interest in normal people and their very interesting lives. Four men survive a plane crash in WW2, each of them has a background and a history, but the main party receives a serious head wound that after the war worsens to the point where he knows he only has a certain time to live as it is inoperable. He decides then to revisit the three other men he was in hospital with so as to find out how they are and how things have turned out for them... the book is about not judging people by the covers, issues of race, and about love and relationships... brilliant, but it's of it's time and some of the words are going to grate until you realise this book is of it's time, and we have moved a long way towards the very ideas Shute is describing .. | |
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#25 in the Thomas Kydd series and Thomas is given a special command to counter the effect of the new American heavy frigates who have been wreaking havoc on their lighter Royal Navy counterparts in the War of 1812.. it ends very badly, with his ship lost, and himself badly wounded, when he gets home he is promoted sideways to a job in the research area of the Admiralty. While recuperating in the Canary Islands a piece of enormous luck falls his way though, and there is an opportunity at last to recover his fortunes.. | |
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An absolutely archetypal 60's thriller from the master of the genre... a cargo ship becomes embroiled in hostage taking and piracy.. with tactical nuclear missiles also thrown in to the mix it is more than a little volatile, but o worries, the hero is urbane, good looking, lucky, and will win the day and the millionaires daughter.. splendid stuff!😀 | |
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Time to recuperate after the high octane madness of a 60's super thriller..😏 None better than this one.. Ransome was the writer who singlehandedly got me into sailing as a much, much, younger Steve the Wargamer, and I still enjoy the books now.. this is the second in the series and the Walker's (Swallow's) and the Blackett's (Amazon's) are back on the lake, but things are not going to plan - the Amazon's great aunt is staying which has effectively confined them to quarters, and then Swallow is wrecked, and thus the Swallow's are also forced to change plans.. simply superb.. an immersive snapshot of a bygone age.. |
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