Friday's Forgotten Books, June 3, 2011

Patti Abbott, THE ASSAULT, Harry Mullish

Chief Inspector Ploeg, a sadistic collaborator with Holland's Nazi occupation force during the war, is assassinated by Bolsheviks on a street where four houses stand. The body is placed in front of the Steenwijk house. In retribution, Nazi troops storm the home of young Anton, killing his parents and brother.

Anton lives the second half of the twentieth century as normally as he can, encountering Ploeg's son, and the various neighbors who also lived on his street, Discovering the truth is a slow process and it takes almost half a century to come upon the full truth.

This book perfectly sums up what happens during war: people who have no part in it suffer. And that suffering reverberates over the years.

The book was made into a movie that as far as I know is still not available. Strange since it won awards at the time. Mullisch is a Dutch writer, who died recently.

Ed Gorman is the author of STRANGLEHOLD and editor with Dave Zeltserman of ON DANGEROUS GROUND.

Forgotten Books: The Wrath of God

The Wrath of God

I'm rereading The Wrath of God by Jack Higgins (originally published as by James Graham and some of those editions are still around) one of my favorite adventure novels by one of my favorite adventure writers.

The early Higgins novels hold up extremely well mixing, as they do, protagonists bitter over the Irish troubles, ready to fight even kill if necessary and and always aware of how corrupt political systems are.

Wrath is set in Mexico during the time of the Revolution at the start of the last century. It is a frightening book in its take on humanity and political beliefs. The murderous priest who is not a priest, the obscene mobster-type, the devious officers of the regular Army...and of course the slaughter of innocents. If the book wasn't so page-turning exciting and filled with numrous switch-backs in the plotting you'd realize how despairing it really is.

A fine harsh believable novel about political systems then and--alas--now.

I found an interesting Australian interview with Higgins, a part of which I'm quoting here:

Which writers have inspired you?

"There are writers I've read, at a literary level, who write different kinds of books than me. I suppose that when I was trying to hone my skills, I very much admired Graham Greene. I admired classic writers, like F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was never a Hemingway fan. But, in terms of thriller writers I always admired Alistair Maclean at his best – HMS Ulysses, The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare. Years later when his health wasn't good, a few of the novels became shorter and thinner, but that was because at that stage he found it more convenient to write them as film scripts.

"He was very good to me because once I was coming out of the Collins offices and my name was shouted; I turned around and it was Maclean, and he'd been in the building and he'd asked the receptionist who I was. So he came out and called to me and insisted that we had a drink, and we sat in the pub. He simply said, "I've read your book and you've really got big potential. I think you're going to make it in a big way". Then we had a general chat about life and publishing, where he made a few points that I'll always remember: that he'd given up reading reviews, that people will put you down because you're not writing a Booker Prize book, you're writing a thriller.

And he said, "after all I have an MA in English Literature from Glasgow University." So he said, "I'm hardly a fool." He said to me, "What about you?" "Well yes, in fact, I'm a Senior Lecturer at a university." I saw him again quite a long time later, and he liked The Eagle Has Landed so much he gave us a great puff, which stayed on the cover for years. Nice man. His work at his best was definitely an inspiration."

Yvette Banek
Paul Bishop
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Cullen Gallagher
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Margot Kinberg
B.V. Lawson
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis/Bill Pronzini
Todd Mason
J.F. Norris
Anita Page
David Rachels
James Reasoner
Gerard Saylor
Ron Scheer
Michael Slind
Kerrie Smith
Kevin Tipple
Tomcat
Carl V
August West