MORE GREAT READS FOR APRIL, 2016
The Unfortunate Englishman, by John Lawton
Mr
Lawton first introduced Joe Wilderness to us in 2013 with ‘Then We Take
Berlin’, (see review below) a furiously-paced thriller set in Post War
Germany: at that time Joe was a young
Cockney chancer – with special abilities, sent to Hamburg as a very junior
intelligence officer. Now, twenty years
later, he is once again with British Intelligence – but only because it’s the
only way he can get out of a German prison for a botched job involving a CIA
‘buddy’ who has proved to be anything but.
His former boss, ex Lt. Colonel Burne-Jones is happy to have him ‘back
on board’ at MI6; as before he has a
particular job in mind well-suited to Joe’s great spying and language talents
(not to mention burglary skills) – but should Joe refuse this kind offer to
return to the fold, then there is nothing else for it but to leave him
languishing in a West German prison for a very long time.
Once
again Joe is a Spook, but with age comes experience and he really is
exceptional at what he is so reluctant to do – which is to train a British
Metallurgist to ferret out information about Soviet Atomic Weapons Complexes on
the pretext of purchasing zinc and indium from them. Geoffrey Masefield has plenty of bona fide
credentials but Joe senses that Our Geoffrey is more seduced by the romantic
fictional dream of being a spy, than the actual nuts and bolts of being
one: shouldn’t he have one of those tiny
cameras? No? Well, what about a gun at the very
least? Spymaster and pupil are at
loggerheads and despite all of Joe’s reservations, Our Geoffrey, Secret Agent,
is sent off to the Soviet Union to do his worst. Which he does, eventually ending up in
Moscow’s notorious Lubyanka prison.
It
gives Joe no pleasure to have to say ‘I told you so’ to Burne-Jones – who is
also his father-in-law (yes, twenty years can produce some surprises: Joe is married to the Boss's daughter Judy and has twin
daughters, Molly and Joan, whom he thought he would never take to but loves to
bits) and now he is faced with a return to Berlin, that city of wrecked
opportunities, dreams and promises, there to find the best, safest and easiest
way out of the fiasco Our Geoffrey has created – and no-one is more surprised
than he to be approached by the Russians themselves: what about a spy swap? With conditions, of course. Aren’t there always? And when Joe hears what those conditions are,
the honourable intelligence officer becomes the Artful Dodger once again, with
reluctant help from his former henchmen.
He has been made an offer he can’t refuse.
Mr
Lawton has produced a sequel to ‘Then We Take Berlin’ which (dare I say it?) is
even better: most of the characters
which delighted the reader in the first book return to entertain again; his plotting is just as fast paced and
action-packed and the dialogue is again smart, funny and entirely
credible. Mr Lawton has yet to drink
from the same flask as John Le Carre, but he is sitting at the same table! FIVE STARS
Then We Take Berlin, by John Lawton
John (known as Joe) is a
Cockney wide boy, a thief trained to the nth degree by his grandfather Abner,
who adopts him when his alcoholic mother is killed by a German bomb whilst
enjoying a lunchtime G and T at the local pub.
Joe has many things stacked against him, not least his East End origins
and the bestiality of his father, a soldier who returns infrequently from
battle to take out the horrors and evil of war on his 13 year old son. Life, especially during the London blitz
would be unendurable were it not for the home of sorts provided by his
grandfather, and Joe’s love of reading – the best form of escapism ever. (And I’m sure every dedicated reader knows
that.) He is a ‘word child’: he has a gift for languages ; he can imitate
successfully any accent; he is a boy of ferocious intelligence but devoid of
scruples – in short, he is the perfect
apprentice thief. And he is an apt
pupil.
All continues as normal in
Joe’s world until Abner has a fatal accident, and necessity dictates a change
of address; the war has come to an end
but Joe’s draft papers arrive, and he is sent to the Royal Air Force, there to
stir up so much trouble that he is constantly in ‘the glasshouse’ for
insubordination – until his many and doubtful talents come to the attention of
Lt. Col. Burne-Jones, an intelligence officer who sees in Joe his true calling: cat burglar and spy for the British Secret
Service. After a crash course in German
and Russian, he is despatched to Hamburg, ostensibly as a clerk, but also to
check on various citizens who swear they endured six years of the Nazis without
becoming one of them.
Germany: broken country of ruined cities and a
vanquished and traumatised population – the perfect breeding ground for rackets
and the black market. Joe the Chancer is
in his element. There is money to be
made, quite apart from his clandestine activities on behalf of His
Majesty. He’s happy as the proverbial
pig in shite – and then he meets Nell.
Nell, short for Christina
Helene von Raeder Burkhardt, patriotic Berliner and aristocratic German , and
at twenty already a victim of tragedy at the hands of the Nazis is trying to
atone for the terrible sins of her countrymen, witnessed first hand at
Belsen. She occupies a high moral
ground, ultimately inaccessible to Joe the Rogue; he finds her principled view of the world
amusing, strange and naïve: his
experience of life has taught him that principles mean nothing – there is only
money, and everyone has his price, including himself.
Mr Lawton has given us a
gripping read, a searing account of man’s inhumanity to man, and characters
that live and breathe on the page.
Joe is the Artful Dodger
of the Second World War, endearing, charming, amoral, and bent as a
corkscrew. No good can come of his
liaison with Nell, his polar opposite, but the reader hopes until the bitter
end that the impossible will happen – this is a novel, after all! Regardless of the outcome, John Lawton has
written a page-turner par excellence:
highly recommended
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