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Post by andydecker on Dec 13, 2017 23:12:10 GMT
Thanks! You are right, it was the Everard series. I thought it interesting because of the setting in WWI. There isn't much war-fiction about that period. I have to check if Reeman has done a WWI novel, come to think of it. Since reading a Charles Todd mystery a few years ago I my interest in this era has grown.
Andy, my understanding is that it is the first 3 of the series that cover WWI: 1. The Blooding of the Guns (Jutland) 2. 60 Minutes for St. George (Zeebrugge raid) 3. Patrol to the Golden Horn (submarine raid to sink a cruiser in the Med) I also can't think of much fiction covering WWI. Reeman has written many books but I am not aware of any set prior to WWII. Thanks again.
I discovered one Reeman concerning WWI on his website. The Last Raider. 1917. To my surprise it is told from the German point of view, at least the short text implies so.
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Post by ripper on Dec 14, 2017 10:23:56 GMT
Andy, my understanding is that it is the first 3 of the series that cover WWI: 1. The Blooding of the Guns (Jutland) 2. 60 Minutes for St. George (Zeebrugge raid) 3. Patrol to the Golden Horn (submarine raid to sink a cruiser in the Med) I also can't think of much fiction covering WWI. Reeman has written many books but I am not aware of any set prior to WWII. Thanks again.
I discovered one Reeman concerning WWI on his website. The Last Raider. 1917. To my surprise it is told from the German point of view, at least the short text implies so.
Interesting, Andy. There is a lot of naval fiction set during the age of sail and a lot set during WWII, but little for WWI and for the period when steam eclipsed sail.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jul 1, 2018 22:43:27 GMT
Crikey. After enjoying tomes by Jim Thompson, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie and Mickey Spillane, I settled down to begin Alistair MacLean's Bear Island, having recently enjoyed the film version on Talking Pictures. Although I'd seen the picture a couple of times I don't think I'd actually read the book before. It's very different. Instead of concerned environmentalists, we have a Film Crew In Peril, aboard the Morning Rose,a luxury converted fishing trawler, on their way to make a motion picture at Bear Island, somewhere towards the Arctic circle, in appalling weather conditions. There's a cast of loads, including the crew's doctor (our unreliable narrator), a large producer, who's daughter is the can't act for toffee star of the flick, and she's married to the snarky production chief. Apart from a host of film types (one wonders whether MacLean's film experiences had any bearing on this novel - he's pretty scathing about the business.) there's the inevitable tough ship's crew. Chapter one ends with the doc discovering the 'gay and carefree' film hairdresser Antonio has been horribly murdered. With other onboard characters suffering from what seems to be a nasty form of food poisoning, it looks like this is foul play, but subtly administered. Three of the sound engineers with a penchant for jeans and psychedelic kaftans have formed a cacophonous music trio called the Three Apostles, and their unholy row covered up Antonio's death screams. Two members of the ship's crew soon succumb to tampered-with food, so the Doc is trying to persuade the crusty and ancient ship's captain to continue on to the island as he's convinced it's merely virulent food poisoning (although the reader knows better). Wonder where we'll go from here? So far, so nautical And Then There Were None.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jul 3, 2018 15:26:11 GMT
Bear Island is to booze (specifically Scotch and Brandy) what Gateway To Hell was to food. Virtually everyone (except the ladies) is hammering it, whether for medicinal purposes or not most of the time. We've had burials at sea, and the ship has limped to the dark, forbidding, bleak coastline of Bear Island. Tensions are beginning to rise. Everyone is suspecting everyone else. The Doc has been clobbered by persons unknown, and suspected someone else of trying to slip him tampered with Johnnie Walker Black Label.There was a fight! But it took place off-page and the Doc turned up late to help clear up. By Jove, this is verbose. Hope something happens soon. Anything.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 8, 2018 13:48:26 GMT
Bear Island is to booze (specifically Scotch and Brandy) what Gateway To Hell was to food. Virtually everyone (except the ladies) is hammering it, whether for medicinal purposes or not most of the time. We've had burials at sea, and the ship has limped to the dark, forbidding, bleak coastline of Bear Island. Tensions are beginning to rise. Everyone is suspecting everyone else. The Doc has been clobbered by persons unknown, and suspected someone else of trying to slip him tampered with Johnnie Walker Black Label.There was a fight! But it took place off-page and the Doc turned up late to help clear up. By Jove, this is verbose. Hope something happens soon. Anything. This sounded promising in initial post but I know you're not a man to invoke memories of Gateway To Hell lightly. Has it picked up at all? Thanks to Crom's generosity, am currently enjoying a police procedural-TV film crew in peril gem, 'P. B. Yuill's The Bornless Keeper.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jul 10, 2018 21:36:38 GMT
No - it went out on a whimper and a tsunami of scotch. However, I've found Edge 43 : Arapaho Revenge and Nick Carter : Spy Castle so things are looking up.
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Post by cromagnonman on Sept 7, 2018 10:42:36 GMT
The monthly stock changeover in the Quinto basement on Charing Cross Road has this week yielded up a huge amount of generic straight adventure stuff. Lots of Maclean and Bagley hardcovers and other things of that sort going begging, if anyone's interested.
While Any Amount of Books down the road has got in a clutch of nut books, ranging from Bigfoot and Atlantis to the paranormal experiences of Jon Pertwee and friends.
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Post by ripper on Nov 25, 2018 17:46:44 GMT
I read Night without End, one of Maclean's earlier novels recently. It is set in the Arctic and tells the story of a passenger plane that crash lands near a British research station and the efforts of the researchers to figure out why the plane was so way off course and whom among the plane's survivors killed the pilot and why. It has quite a few twists and turns, and the hostile climate is as big a threat as the killer hiding among the survivors, and is used quite well by Maclean to build up suspense. More unusual for Maclean, the main character does not have secret knowledge hidden from the reader that is a feature of many of the author's plots. While it is not one of my favourite of Maclean's books, it did keep me entertained with its suspense and in working out who was the killer.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on May 9, 2019 20:10:59 GMT
Desmond Bagley has a new novel out, DOMINO ISLAND. This beats Richard Laymon's record for how long you can keep writing after you die.
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Post by mcannon on May 11, 2019 9:12:23 GMT
Desmond Bagley has a new novel out, DOMINO ISLAND. This beats Richard Laymon's record for how long you can keep writing after you die. While Mr Bagley passed away in 1983, for sheer posthumous production it's probably hard to beat "V C Andrews", who died in 1986 but has subsequently written many, many more novels than when she was alive. Mark
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on May 11, 2019 17:53:05 GMT
While Mr Bagley passed away in 1983, for sheer posthumous production it's probably hard to beat "V C Andrews", who died in 1986 but has subsequently written many, many more novels than when she was alive. Yes, but I believe she has had help with those.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 26, 2021 9:21:42 GMT
For those who are interested in Desmond Bagley, here is a info I got from J. Kingston Pierce's excellent crime blog The Rap Sheet
This coming Monday, March 1, will bring—from The Bagley Brief Web site—the release of Writer: An Enquiry into a Novelist, Philip Eastwood’s “painstaking reconstruction” of a previously unpublished memoir by English adventure-thriller writer Desmond Bagley (1923-1983). In advance of that, Shotsmag Confidential has posted the foreword to Eastwood’s work, written by Mike Ripley (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) and establishing Bagley’s stature as one of the Big Three among contributors to the”Golden Age of the British thriller,” the other two being Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean.
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Post by cromagnonman on Feb 26, 2021 12:28:40 GMT
Ripley's book KISS KISS BANG BANG is an essential read for anyone with an interest in the heyday of British thriller writing. Its excellent. But I don't think you can restrict the biggest guns of the period to just a triumvirate of Maclean, Bagley and Innes. Not with Victor Canning then in his pomp, and superb bestselling stuff being produced on a regular basis by the likes of Duncan Kyle, Colin Forbes, Jack Higgins and Brian Callison among many others.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Feb 26, 2021 12:41:27 GMT
Ripley's book KISS KISS BANG BANG is an essential read for anyone with an interest in the heyday of British thriller writing. Its excellent. But I don't think you can restrict the biggest guns of the period to just a triumvirate of Maclean, Bagley and Innes. Not with Victor Canning then in his pomp, and superb bestselling stuff being produced on a regular basis by the likes of Duncan Kyle, Colin Forbes, Jack Higgins and Brian Callison among many others. Duncan Kyle may not be as superb as you remember him.
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Post by cromagnonman on Feb 26, 2021 13:51:13 GMT
Ripley's book KISS KISS BANG BANG is an essential read for anyone with an interest in the heyday of British thriller writing. Its excellent. But I don't think you can restrict the biggest guns of the period to just a triumvirate of Maclean, Bagley and Innes. Not with Victor Canning then in his pomp, and superb bestselling stuff being produced on a regular basis by the likes of Duncan Kyle, Colin Forbes, Jack Higgins and Brian Callison among many others. Duncan Kyle may not be as superb as you remember him. Well each to their own, of course. Although I thought his historical novel THE WAR QUEEN (written under his real name) was excellent, and I read STALKING POINT only recently and really enjoyed it, although it was let down by a poor ending I'll grant you. But I wouldn't let that deter me from revisiting other books of his. However I didn't see literary quality as being the point at issue here. If it was Maclean himself could scarcely claim a place as one of the big three as his own powers were in sharp decline by the late 70s. But he remained a big name and a much borrowed presence in the public library system which was hugely important in establishing a writer's status in those days. But Canning was every bit as popular, a consistently excellent storyteller and by being more prolific probably more deserving of a place amongst the big three than Bagley.
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