Jon Morgan is a retired police Superintendent and francophile who, it is said, has consequently seen almost everything awful that people can do to each other. He relishes quality writing in all genres but advises particularly on police procedure for authors including John Harvey and Jon McGregor. Haunts bookshops both new and secondhand and stands with Erasmus: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I may buy food and clothes.”
This is a Joe
Wilderness novel. As usual, Joe Wilderness is in trouble, whether it be through
his post war, Four Power-ruled Berlin smuggling rackets, his later activities
as a spy, working for his father-in-law, a ‘C’ type character, being hauled
before a select committee for losing a Soviet spy on a Berlin bridge spy-exchange,
he is always in trouble.
He is still a Flight Sergeant - nominally
at least - utterly incapable of tact and
diplomacy, instead a devotee of ‘talking truth to power’, he is duly exiled to
the ostensibly dull and boring cold war wastes of Finland to keep him out of
the way. Inevitably, he finds more trouble, or does it find him?
The people and contacts he has
made, whether in the KGB, MI6, CIA or simply the various underworlds of Europe,
over half a lifetime of spying and sailing hugely close to the wind, reappear
throughout the book and the account of the abortive Prague Spring and the
Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia are beautifully nuanced and heartbreakingly
recounted.
Fans will welcome the return of the
ever talented Nell as aide to Willy Brandt, not yet Chancellor but scheming to
become the German leader. Erno Schreiber the forger, a Jewish survivor, getting
old like the rest of us. For me personally the return of the Troy family and
their not insignificant part in the later part of the novel is an absolute joy.
It is very difficult to summarise
the plot of a Lawton novel as it jumps around in time and geography but suffice
it to say that you will enjoy every single one of Joe Wilderness’s scrapes as
this most humane (well apart from the people he has killed) and principled, (in
his own terms at least) yet basically, crooked, of spies wends his way towards
the end of a book which leaves you begging for more and wondering, in the light
of the ending, whether there is in fact to be any more at all!
A new Lawton is a thing greatly to
be desired, to misquote someone or
other. I discovered him quite a few years ago and devoured the lot. His brand
of historical crime / spy fiction is almost unparalleled and is only equalled,
I think, by the late Patrick O’Brian for sheer historical accuracy and by
Edward Wilson who writes in a similar field. Those of you who like your fiction
based firmly in historical fact, with walk-on parts from the great and the good
of the age, scattered with literary, political and cultural references and
frequently hilarious to boot, are in for a real treat.
Mr .Lawton, I appreciate the
research that it takes to get the detailed picture of the 40’s 50’s and
60’s spot-on, but please do not leave us
waiting too long. This book, and its predecessors are such a valuable tonic in
these dark times.
