Here is a book which, if you are a vault member of a certain vintage, you might well remember having seen your dad once read; probably whilst your own nose was buried in the latest issue of
. If not this title specifically then one indistinguishable from it. The 70s was a rich period for a particular type of generic thriller. There used to be sections in the library given over entirely to them, and it was my own dad's first port of call for preferred reading matter. I have many fond memories of him returning from his weekly forays there armed with a small clutch of such books. Some, such as those produced by either Alistair MacLean or Hammond Innes, naturally gravitated to the bestseller lists. The vast majority of it though was doomed for out of print obscurity. And between the two extremes, running like a rare geological seam, a thin vein of better than average fiction which really should have made their authors better known, had they only had the good fortune to have attracted the eye of an enterprising film producer. Chances are the names of some of them will sound unfathomably familiar even if you cant put a title to a single book they wrote: Desmond Bagley, Duncan Kyle, Brian Callison, to name just a few.
Geoffrey Jenkins was more fortunate than most. He did actually succeed in having a couple of his books filmed. Had things turned out differently he would also have had the accolade of being the first person to publish a James Bond pastiche. Unfortunately for him Fleming's neurotic widow scuttled that particular boat to posterity. And the films left no lasting impression. So instead we are left with a legacy of sixteen novels published between 1959 and 1994 by which to judge him.
A BRIDGE OF MAGPIES, published in 1974, is as good a place as anywhere to start.
It is the 7th of July 1943 and a British passenger liner
City of Baroda is torpedoed by a German U-boat off of the coast of Africa. In desperation the liner runs itself aground atop a mysterious rock formation called Doodenstadt (City of the Dead). Almost immediately the U-boat itself is attacked and crippled in an exchange of fire with the frigate
Gousblom. It signals that it is heading seawards and will report its position the following morning. And that is the last that is ever heard of it.
Thirty years later and a disgraced ex-South Africa navy captain by the name of Straun Weddell is press-ganged by his former commander into accepting a position as headman at a remote territory called Possession Island. His covert objective is to assist an archaeologist called Koch in the investigation of a fresco discovered at Doodenstadt which appears to offer evidence of a lost civilization. When Weddell arrives at Possession he finds two unexpected visitors to this forbidden territory: an emotionally damaged woman called Jutta Walsh who is searching for clues to the identity of her father in the wreck of
City of Baroda, and an enigmatic Malay fisherman known as Kaptein Denny whom Weddell immediately suspects of pursuing a secret agenda of his own. Soon after Weddell's problems are compounded by the arrival of a mysterious black trawler and its compliment of sinister Korean crewmen, dispensing murder and mayhem in its wake. Events escalate rapidly and culminate in the customary fireworks.
It all sounds rather good, doesn't it? And I daresay if GJ's continental compatriot Wilbur Smith had written it then it would have been. Unfortunately under GJ's less polished touch it is a novel which both frustrates and disappoints in equal measure.
But I'll begin with the good things first (and there were times whilst reading it when I had to forcibly remind myself that there were good things to be said about it). For starters the setting is a marvellous one: the bizarre and barren expanse of the Skeleton Coast of modern day Namibia, but which at the time of the novel's completion was known rather more prosaically as South West Africa. This is the strange alien landscape that the insufferably smug Professor Brian Cox once utilized to illustrate the mysteries of Time
(the only real mystery being - insofar as Cromagnonman is concerned - why this golden opportunity was wasted to leave him there). It is a place whose bleak grandeur demands rapturous description and so, perversely, Jenkins chooses to blanket it in fog for much of the novel's duration. This might well be climatically accurate but it cannot help but smack of a writer lacking the vocabulary to do it justice. Or the ambition to attempt it at any rate.
In addition the story does include a couple of well done tense sequences. The first occurs when Weddell's boat is caught in a storm. The other centres on a salvage attempt much later in the book which I wont elaborate upon so as not to spoil it for anyone, even whilst acknowledging that the cover illustration is nowhere near so coy. Generally speaking though this is a thriller noticeably lacking in thrills. Vast swathes of it seem to consist of nothing more stimulating than sailing around in the fog.
The book's real failings though lies in its characters. Interesting characters make it that much easier to overlook plot holes, forgive narrative fatigue and generally suspend one's disbelief. Real assets in the thriller writing game. Unfortunately Weddell is a dull, largely incompetent, and unsympathetic hero. He only really comes into his own very late in the book during the aforementioned salvage attempt. By that time he has already long forsaken both credibility and the reader's sympathy. At one point he officiously evicts Jutta from Possession expressly for the purpose of safeguarding the secret of the lost city and then, perversely and nonsensically, blurts out that very secret to her in order to garner her affection. Likewise Jutta is equally unconvincing, frequently irritating, and just as much a puppet clearly dancing to the author's tune. As is so often the case with female characters in thrillers written by men her role is to fill her sweater more impressively than paragraphs with anything of interest. Only the enigmatic Kaptein Denny really captivates, but then enigmatic is an easy hook on which to snag a reader's attention.
Precious few of the story's, admittedly intriguing, premises actually lead anywhere. The majority of them are simply MacGuffins. The central plot thread of the vanished U-boat and the mysterious cargo it contained is indisputably clever and inventive but it isn't resolved in the satisfying manner which one is lead to believe that it will be. Again you cannot help but wonder that Wilbur Smith would have handled it so much better.
If
A BRIDGE OF MAGPIES is reflective and representative of GJ's general output then it is easy to see why his work never won him promotion to the major leagues. It has all the hallmarks of sub-Bondian Bond: (we even have the obligatory interview with the admiral at the opening of proceedings). But it completely lacks the panache of Fleming's work.
Nevertheless there was probably just about enough of merit in it to persuade me to give Jenkins another go at some point way down the line. But I strongly suspect that the main reason he sold originally, and presumably remains on collector's shelves today, is on account of the amazing Chris Foss covers he was lucky enough to be jacketed with.
This one's a beauty isn't it.
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