Henry Treece’s The Great Captains

Henry Treece’s The Great Captains was published in 1956. It belongs to his Celtic Tetralogy of historical novels.

As well as being a poet Henry Treece (1911-1966) was a prolific British writer of historical fiction, some of it aimed at children and some being for adults.

The Great Captains is very much historical fiction for adults. It deals with the King Arthur story but ignores the idealised romanticised approach taken by medieval sources (such as Malory) and by later writers. It is an attempt to write a realistic account of what might have happened.

It’s unlikely that King Arthur actually existed but the legends may have some historical basis. He may have been based (perhaps very loosely) on one or more actual historical figures.

Treece’s novel cannot be appreciated with taking into account the historical background. Britain became a Roman province under the Emperor Claudius in 43AD. The province became very Romanised culturally. In 410AD, with the western empire beginning to crumble, the Roman legions were withdrawn and Britain was left to fend for itself. By the later stages of the occupation Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. Arthur supposedly lived about a century after the Romans abandoned the province by which time the gradual conquest by Germanic tribes such as the Angles, Jutes and Saxons was well under way.

In his novel Treece assumes that the Christianisation of Britain was fairly superficial and that a gradual reversion to paganism was taking place.

Ambrosius is an old man, almost blind. He is the Count of Britain which makes him the emperor’s representative and gives him nominal authority over the various petty kinglets. By this time no-one even knows if there still is an emperor. He is accompanied everywhere by a young man, Medrawt (Mordred), who believes himself to be Ambrosius’s chosen successor. At that time Ambrosius will hand him his sword, a symbolic mystical act which will make him the new Count of Britain.

The journey to the west apparently with the idea of asserting Ambrosius’s authority over the western kings. During a feast at the court of Uther Pendragon Uther’s son Artos the Bear (who is of course Arthur) seizes Ambrosius’s sword and thrusts it into a log. Artos challenges any man there to draw the sword from the log. Medrawt tries and fails. Artos succeeds. To his own considerable surprise Artos is now Count of Britain.

It is at this point that Artos starts to believe that he has a destiny. He begins the pursuit of his dream. That dream is to unite the British kingdoms, re-establish Roman civilisation in Britain and drive out the Saxons. Pursuing a dream can be a good thing or a bad thing. For Artos it will prove to be both.

Artos has a son by Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere) and is as a result in disgrace owing to the fact that that Artos and Gwenhwyfar have the same father.

There is more than one Gwenhwyfar in this tale.

Artos pursues his dream. Medrawt, felling that his own destiny has been snatched from him, broods. Battles are fought and won. Sometimes victory is sweet, sometimes it is bitter. Perhaps the dream never was achievable and yet Artos makes it a reality. Perhaps it should have remained a dream. And perhaps Artos has no choice other than to pursue it.

There’s no magic in this story, apart from one very brief scene involving Merlin. This is however a world in which concepts such as destiny and omens are seen as very real. Treece understands that the past is in many ways an alien civilisation.

Artos/Arthur’s religious beliefs are uncertain. He seems to be tempted to return to belief in the old gods of paganism. His motivations are vaguely mystical rather than religious. He is also certainly ambitious and his belief in his own destiny and his belief in Britain’s destiny are not clearly separated in his mind.

Artos/Atthur is a hero, but a flawed and tragic one. Maybe he’s simply attempting the impossible, trying to recreate a golden past that has been irretrievably lost.

This novel was written in 1956 so it’s slightly ironic and slightly sceptical approach (with a dash of cynicism) was refreshing at that time and deconstructing myth and history had not yet become such a dominating and tedious approach.

The Great Captains is superb historical fiction and is very highly recommended.

J. E. Macdonnell’s Come Die With Me

Come Die With Me, published in 1965, was the first of J. E. Macdonnell’s fourteen Mark Hood spy thrillers.

J. E. Macdonnell was an incredibly prolific Australian author. He wrote at least 200 novels, mostly naval fiction (he spent 14 years in the navy). If you like WW2 naval fiction then his stuff is very good even if it does give the impression that the Australian navy won the war singlehandedly!  He wrote in other genres as well and it was probably inevitable that in the 60s he would try his hand at spy fiction.

Mark Hood is a fairly typical tough guy fictional spy. He works for an international agency called Intertrust. It’s one of those agencies that everybody pretends don’t exist. It seems to be an unofficial informal partnership between several countries, including Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union. Its special brief is to prevent nuclear technology from falling the wrong hands. 

One thing that does make this novel notable is the level of casual brutality. And Mark Hood is much more ruthless and cold-blooded than James Bond. He’s even more ruthless and cold-blooded than Matt Helm. Spies cannot afford to leave witnesses and Hood is quite happy to liquidate such people even if they’re actually pretty harmless and even if they’re old shipmates!

Mark Hood is also a very enthusiastic womaniser. Some modern readers may need to head for the fainting couches when it gets to the bit where the heroine gets really turned on after seeing Mark kill a man. Hood is also an athlete and a racing-car driver. 

He’s an American educated in England and the author is trying to create as much of the fashionable cosmopolitan feel of the spy fiction of that era as he can. The Bahamas is a good choice for an exotic glamorous setting.

In this story it’s not the Russians who are the bad guys but the Germans. Yes this is yet another 60s spy story about followers of that Austrian painter chappie who don’t accept that the war is over.

With the author’s naval background it’s no surprise that this novel has a decidedly nautical flavour. The basic premise is somewhat original. The bad guys have stolen an American PT-boat (or an MTB as they were known in the British navy). But this is no ordinary PT-boat - it’s a nuclear-armed PT-boat. Its torpedoes have atomic warheads. And a new very secret very high-tech guidance system. Which is why the Americans are so upset. The British are upset as well - the PT-boat was stolen in the Bahamas - British territory.

There is of course a megalomaniac super-villain of the standard type, a man named Gauss, and he’s rather sensitive when it comes to aspersions on his mental stability. He has a loyal henchman, rather brutal but also a racing-car driver. Gauss has his secret headquarters, eerily reminiscent of the mountain retreat of that Austrian painter. Gauss is very much a sports car enthusiast, among his other hobbies.

He has a master plan of the usual type. It involves a lot more than nuclear-armed PT-boats.

There are two beautiful women in this story although Hood only gets to bed one of them.

There’s some decent action and suspense. The novel has a rather tough gritty feel and it definitely has its dark moments.

Come Die With Me isn’t groundbreaking but it’s a competent spy thriller and it’s recommended.

It should be noted that there’s a 1969 sexy lady spy novel with the same title, James Eastwood’s Come Die With Me.

Sax Rohmer's Grey Face

Grey Face is a 1924 Sax Rohmer potboiler and as to which genre to which to assign it, you’ll have to decide for yourself when you read it. And you should read it.

Rohmer wrote some gothic horror but he also wrote stories that seem to be supernatural (or paranormal) horror but turn out to have rational explanations. There’s often occultism and fringe science. Or esoteric religio-mystical stuff. Even science fictional elements. Even in the stories in which there’s a rational explanation there’s enough strangeness to qualify them as weird fiction. You just never know what you’re going to get.

That applies to Grey Face in a major way.

It starts with a guy named Carey who had been in military intelligence during the war. Now he works for Scotland Yard in a semi-official capacity as an advisor. And he’s had a couple of very odd memory lapses. One night he sits down to write an important report to the Commissioner, Sir John Nevinson. Three hours later he wakes up and the report hasn’t been written. He remembers nothing of the preceding few hours. The following night the same thing happens again. What worries him is that somehow he has used a whole stack of writing paper. He must have written the report. In fact the impressions left on the writing pad confirm that he did write the report But he has no idea what has happened to that report.

He has romantic problems as well. He is hoping to marry Jasmine, the daughter of eminent physician Provost Hope (who specialises in rather fringe areas such as hypnotism and psycho-analysis). Jasmine has broken off the engagement because he lied to her. The annoying thing is that he knows quite well that he did not lie to her and he cannot understand why she thinks he did. She also believes that he has fallen for the charms of the mysterious and notorious (and undoubtedly immoral) Madame Sabinov.

For her part Jasmine is being pursued by M. De Trepniak, an even odder bird. He is reputed to be Russian but nothing certain is known about him. He is fabulously wealthy but the source of his riches are unknown.

These romantic dramas are connected with Carey’s memory lapses, and with some strange experiments, and a jewel robbery and the theft of vital official documents. The connections are bizarre and more connections keep emerging, each of them even more bizarre. There is a mysterious Egyptian, an adept of the mystical arts. There are strange talismans. There is a murder. There is a vast conspiracy which may well have occult underpinnings. It may be linked to forbidden esoteric teachings. And did I mention that there are people who appear to be dead, but are not?

But of course none of this is certain. Everything in this tale is tantalisingly ambiguous.

No-one was better than Rohmer at creating an atmosphere of mystery and menace and decadence and moral depravity.

The plot is fiendishly complex but consistently intriguing. There is plenty of danger (both physical and moral) and breathless excitement. There are hidden rooms and secret passageways. There are cruel imprisonments. There are hoodlums and fiendish human monsters. There are inexplicable and terrifying illnesses.

There’s also a assortment of villains all of whom have given at least some consideration to the idea of double-crossing their accomplices.

It’s huge amounts of fun and it’s very highly recommended. One of Rohmer’s best.

Stark House have paired this novel with another delightfully overheated Sax Rohmer potboiler, The Green Eyes of Bâst.

I’ve reviewed a lot of Sax Rohmer’s work and I particularly recommend The Leopard Couch, The Dream Detective, Brood of the Witch-Queen and of course the Fu Manchu books such as The Mask of Fu Manchu.

Peter Cheyney's Can Ladies Kill?

Between 1936 and 1951 Englishman Peter Cheyney had a lot of success with his American-style pulp crime/spy thrillers. The fact that he had never been to America didn’t worry him. He knew the America of Hollywood movies and hardboiled pulp fiction and he knew that that was the America that mattered to his readers. Some of Cheyney’s books are set in the United States, some are not, but they all have a decided hardboiled flavour.

His most famous series characters were private detective Slim Callaghan and FBI agent Lemmy Caution. Lemmy Caution featured in a terrific series of French movies in the 1950s and early 60s with the great Eddie Constantine in the title role.

Can Ladies Kill?, published in 1938, was the fourth Lemmy Caution novel.

Marella Thorensen has sent a message to the FBI that she has vital evidence regarding serious Federal crimes and she wants a meeting with a Federal agent to hand over that evidence. So Lemmy Caution finds himself on her doorstep in San Francisco but there’s nobody home. He calls back later and there’s still nobody home. It’s a bit puzzling.

Berenice Lee Sam has also received a communication from Marella requesting an urgent meeting. Berenice hasn’t come home and her father has contacted the cops.

Then Marella gets iced. Literally. I won’t explain further because it’s too cool a detail to spoil. Her body is found floating in the bay. And then some guys in a Chevrolet open up on Lemmy with a machinegun.

Berenice is the daughter of rich Chinese businessman Lee Sam. Marella’s husband is Lee Sam’s lawyer. Something illegal has been going on, a racket in silk, and it involves Lee Sam and semi-reformed mobster Jack Rocca who has business dealings with Lee Sam and it involves Rudy Spiglia who is Jack Rocca’s chief lieutenant. The problem is that it’s illegal but fairly trivial. The information Marella wanted to pass on to the FI had to be much more important than that.

And there have been some adulterous goings-on involving some of these people. That might provide a motive for murder, but that also cannot possibly be the evidence Marella wanted to give the Bureau.

Lemmy has no idea what information Marella had but he’s convinced that it is the key to the whole case. Without that key all the other evidence may well be totally misleading. And without that key the theory Lemmy has come up with might well collapse completely. Lemmy’s chief virtue as a detective is that he doesn’t allow himself to be locked in to a theory no matter how superficially attractive it might be.

The plot really is fiendishly complex but Cheyney brings it all together successfully at the end. And the ending is a real sting in the tail.

There are several dames mixed up in all this and none can be trusted. Including Marella, and she’s dead. Berenice is very rich and very gorgeous. Dames like that are always dangerous. Lemmy figures that although she might be dangerous she’s probably a hell of a woman, and after he sleeps with her he knows she really is a hell of a woman.

There is of course no shortage of action. Lemmy is handy with his fists and with his Luger automatic but he has brains as well as brawn. He’s not the kind of detective who crawls around on his hands and knees with a magnifying glass looking for cigar ash. He does however spend a lot of time thinking. Lemmy doesn’t have much polish but he’s a likeable guy.

Can Ladies Kill? is highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed other Lemmy Caution novels - Never a Dull Moment, Dames Don’t Care and Poison Ivy. And I’ve reviewed several of the Lemmy Caution movies including Poison Ivy (1953).

Fritz Leiber’s Gather, Darkness!

Fritz Leiber’s novel Gather, Darkness! was serialised in Astounding Science Fiction in May, June, and July 1943 and published in book form in 1950.

Leiber had been part of Lovecraft’s circle of correspondents and Leiber was always more a writer of weird fiction than science fiction.

In the distant future the world is governed by a theocracy. The priestly Hierarchy enforces the worship of the Great God. The power of that theocracy is now being challenged by occult forces, servants of the dread archfiend Sathanis. Rebellion is being plotted by the New Witchcraft.

But in fact it’s all an illusion. The reader knows this right from the start. There is no Great God. This is a synthetic religion invented by scientists to just a dictatorship of scientists. Miracles are performed regularly, but by means of advanced technology. There are angels, but they are really ultra-light aircraft. The Hierarchy has sophisticated mind control technologies and powerful drugs at its disposal. The population is kept in an uneducated superstitious state and the religion of the Great God has never been challenged.

Now occult forces, labelled the New Witchcraft, are at work spreading terror and confusion. But this is an illusion as well. There’s nothing supernatural about the New Witchcraft. They just have their own advanced technologies.

So what appears to be either a clash between opposing religions of dark and light, or a clash between science and magic, is in fact a power struggle between two fake religions invented by opposing factions of scientists and technocrats.

The trouble starts when a priest named Jarles suddenly harangues a crowd with a blasphemous anti-Hierarchy rant. He expects immediate arrest and punishment but it doesn’t happen.

The archpriest Goniface is gradually consolidating his control over the Hierarchy, driven by complex ambitions which will be revealed more fully at the end of the story.

There’s mind control in this book as well, a subject that would soon become an obsession for both science fiction and spy fiction writers. In Leiber’s novel a man’s personality can be moulded into a new form, but the old personality doesn’t quite disappear. Which can cause complications. Jarles is an enemy to the Hierarchy, he is remoulded into a loyal servant of the Hierarchy but there is now a major conflict set up in his mind. He has become an unpredictable factor.

The way technology is used to mimic the supernatural are quite clever. The witches have familiar spirits, but there’s nothing actually supernatural about them.

There’s certainly satire here but religion is not Leiber’s target. He’s more concerned with aiming his barbs at political ideologies and most of all he’s concerned with the way regimes (all regimes) construct an intricate web of deceptions to give themselves legitimacy.

The technologies deployed by both the Hierarchy and its opponents rely on the falsification of perceptions. Some of the more terrifying weapons are no more than illusions. The power struggle between the Hierarchy and will at times become violent but mostly it’s a lengthy complex exercise in the control of mass psychology. Fear is the most powerful weapon of all if it’s used subtly and effectively.

The major characters are all motivated by fears and by their own illusions and self-deceptions as well as ambition and, occasionally, the most deadly motivation of all - misguided idealism.

Gather, Darkness! is complex intelligent science fiction by one of the masters. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed other Fritz Leiber books - You're All Alone and The Big Time.

Kathleen E. Woodiwiss's The Flame and the Flower

The Flame and the Flower is a 1972 romance novel by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss.

I’ve read most genres of fiction but I must confess that I have read virtually no romance fiction. I do however think that if one claims to be interested in genre fiction one should sample as many genres as possible, and while this novel is clearly aimed almost exclusively at a female readership I thought it was worth taking a look at it.

This is considered to be one of the most important romance novels ever written. It more or less established a whole new sub-genre, the erotic historical romance. It is regarded as the first full-blown “bodice ripper” and the first modern steamy romance with much stronger erotic content compared to earlier romance novels. As the story unfolds bodices will be ripped and bosoms will heave. By the end of the 70s it had sold four-and-a-half million copies and it’s still in print and still selling steadily.

It’s also interesting in being quite controversial and it has many over-sensitive modern reviewers clutching their pearls. 1972 was a more enlightened time. It was a time when women were beginning to be open and honest about their sexual desires. It is the author’s honesty about such matters that leads to so much pearl-clutching.

It begins in the year 1799, in England. Heather Simmons is a well-bred girl but since her father’s death she has lived in poverty, grievously mistreated by her vindictive aunt. She thinks her luck has changed for the better when her aunt’s brother invites her to London where he assures her he can find her a respectable position in a school. Heather is rather innocent and discovers that her Uncle William and his associate Mr Hint are scoundrels. She escapes with her virtue intact but she leaves a corpse behind her. She flees, convinced that she will be pursued by the law and hanged as a murderess although she acted in self-defence.

Wandering in a state of confusion on the dockside she encounters two friendly sailors who assure her that the captain of the Fleetwood, an American trading ship, will be overjoyed to receive her. She is naïve and she thinks that taking ship for America might be the only way to avoid the hangman’s noose.

Captain Brandon Birmingham is indeed overjoyed to receive her and this time she does not escape with her virtue intact. It is important to note that he is absolutely convinced that she is a prostitute. He had asked his crewmen to fetch a whore for him. It does not for one moment cross his mind that she is anything other than a whore. He assumes that her unwillingness is feigned - that she is playing hard to get in order to increase his ardour. If one can avoid having a knee-jerk reaction to this scene then one has to admit that Brandon has no reason to suspect that she is in fact a naïve virgin.

As a result of this encounter Brandon finds himself forced to marry the girl. He is very unhappy about this. To complicate matters Heather is now pregnant.

Everything in this story hinges on misunderstandings, misunderstandings that could easily be cleared up if only these two people were not both so proud and so stubborn and so determined not to reveal the way their feelings towards each other are changing. Heather is determined not to allow Brandon to share her bed. He is determined that Heather will be his wife in name only - that he will give her neither the love nor the physical intimacy that marriage entails.

They hate each other, but it’s the kind of hate that can just as easily become love. And there is strong physical attraction on both sides. Sharing a small cabin on his ship they get to see each other at very close quarters. He cannot help noticing her luscious body. She thinks he is a monster, but a very handsome tall well-muscled monster and she is very impressed by his manliness. He is very manly indeed. Soon he is climbing the walls in sexual frustration but he still will not do anything about it even when she seems keen for him to do so. She is also climbing the walls in sexual frustration but will not admit that she wants him in her bed.

The author manages to make all this fairly believable.

There’s a mystery thriller plot here as well, which simmers in the background and eventually takes centre stage. There are several murders, wild accusations, some fairly decent suspense and some action.

It’s all very overheated and melodramatic but it’s entertaining. Brandon and Heather both have their faults and they’re complex and contradictory characters. They may not be immediately likeable but this is doubtless intentional - as their mutual affection grows and they learn to appreciate each other’s good points so the readers’ affection for them grows as well.

The Flame and the Flower is rather enjoyable. Recommended.

Malko 8: Death on the River Kwai

SAS L’Or de la Rivière Kwai, published in French in 1971, is one of just a handful of the 200 hugely popular Malko novels written by French former newspaper reporter Gérard de Villiers to be translated into English. That English edition, Malko 8: Death on the River Kwai, came out in 1975.

The hero of this spy series is His Serene Highness Prince Malko Ligne, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, Knight of the Black Eagle, Knight of the Order of Landgrave Seraphim of Kletgaus, Knight of the Order of Malta. This Austrian prince works for the CIA. He does it for the money. He owns a castle and castles cost a fortune to maintain. Despite his mercenary motivations the CIA regards him as absolutely reliable.

The jobs he does for the CIA are the tricky ones that require a certain amount of flair. They can at times be a bit morally murky.

He’s currently in Thailand investigating the disappearance of his espionage mentor Jim Stanford. Stanford is retired from the CIA but spies can never really retire. Their pasts are always likely to catch up to them. Stanford may have been killed or he may have been abducted. And, oddly enough, back in the States his sister is murdered.

The local CIA station chief has given Malko an assistant - his pretty Thai secretary (who turns out to be from an incredibly rich family). Tepin is efficient and helpful. She is a virgin. She makes sure that Malko knows this. Tepin intends to defend her virtue. On the other hand she can’t help noticing that Malko is terribly brave and handsome and he has such sexy eyes. But she’s a good girl.

There are plenty of leads but they just leave Malko more bewildered. Stanford had a beautiful Thai wife, a thriving silk business, a luxurious house and an impressive art collection. But clearly he had secrets. His wife is not saying anything. Her attitude is puzzling and she seems just a little scared.

He discovers that Stanford was a regular customer at a Bangkok massage parlour where he got special favours (very special) from a very cute masseuse. Malko gets the same treatment from her and he can well understand why Stanford was such a loyal customer. She introduces Malko to pleasures he had never even imagined.

Stanford also has a mistress, a Chinese singer/whore. Malko doesn’t get much useful information from her but she teaches him a thing or two as well. Malko finds that the most effective place to interrogate pretty female witnesses is in bed. Even if they don’t reveal useful information the interrogations are still rewarding.

The problem is that while he now knows that Jim Stanford was no Boy Scout none of this offers Malko any clues as to why someone would want to liquidate or kidnap him. Stanford chased women but there are no indications that he was mixed up in anything political. On the other hand, taking into account that his sister was targeted as well, he had to have been involved in something big and something sinister.

Meanwhile Tepin is starting to reconsider this whole defending her virginity thing.

A major strength of this novel is the female characters. They are of course dangerous and sexy but they also have complex and believably feminine motivations. Malko is smart enough to know that one of these women is the key to the mystery but he has no idea which of them it might be.

And after he’s been beaten up several times he’s sure he must be getting close to some answers.

Malko has a tendency to be careless. He gets himself into scrapes that could have been avoided. It’s not that he isn’t a good intelligence agent, but he is not an infallible super-spy.

There’s plenty of action, there’s a well-crafted plot with effective twists, there’s an exotic setting and there are those beautiful dangerous women. It all adds up to a fine spy thriller and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed five of the other English-translated Malko books - West of Jerusalem, Operation New York, Man from Kabul, Malko versus the CIA and Malko: Angel of Vengence. They're all very much worth reading.