Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household: First Penguin Edition, 1949, plus Robert Macfarlane on the Novel

Let's round off this short, sporadic run of vintage Penguin paperbacks with an iconic edition of an iconic work of fiction:

The 1949 first Penguin printing of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, originally published in hardback by Chatto & Windus in 1939. As with the Penguin paperback of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, this particular edition has appeared on Existential Ennui before – more than once, in fact – but not, I hasten to add, this particular copy. Because for reasons far too tedious and testing to go into I've ended up with two copies of the Penguin first edition: the one seen in this post, which is a recent acquisition, and the one seen in this 2010 review. Ridiculous really, but at least it gives me the excuse to dedicate a post to what is an uncommon edition (despite appearances to the contrary; at time of writing I can't see a single copy of the 1949 Penguin printing on AbeBooks) of a brilliant book.

Of course, the novel itself already has a dedicated post on Existential Ennui, in a 1939 Chatto & Windus Services Library edition; if you've a mind to, you can read that or my 2010 review – or indeed this post on the 1982 sequel, Rogue Justice – for my thoughts on it. But I'd direct you instead to this more recent Guardian piece on the book by the travel writer Robert Macfarlane. When I came across it in the Review section of the paper the other week it was an unexpected delight; an edited version of Macfarlane's introduction to Orion's new edition of Rogue Male, it covers, as Macfarlane himself says on Orion's Murder Room website: 

...its cult status, my own relationship/history with it, my visits to its landscapes, my tracking of Household's hero, Household himself, the book's qualities and histories and interests, why it compels (and survives) and why it is still read – and still should be read – now, more than seventy years after it was published.

I was especially struck by Macfarlane's pilgrimage to what he'd been led to believe was the Dorset "holloway" in which Household's initially nameless hero – later christened Raymond Ingelram in Rogue Justice – literally goes to ground in order to elude his pursuer, the cunning Major Quive-Smith. It's this part of the novel that I found the most affecting, not to mention alluring: a retreat into a primitive rural idyll, one which for me exerts a powerful appeal. Many others of Household's novels have a similar rustic fascination (A Rough Shoot springs to mind), something that Macfarlane touches on when he mentions on the Murder Room site that "Household has been, in his odd way, at the heart of my writing for years now."

And as luck would have it I have another Household novel lined up for my next post, in which I'll be revisiting what has become by far the most popular post or page on Existential Ennui: Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s.

First Blood by David Morrell (British First Edition, Barrie & Jenkins, 1972): the Original Novel, Basis for the 1982 Movie

This next novel I'm featuring in this series of posts on books wot begat perhaps more famous films didn't just inspire a movie: it inspired an entire franchise, comprising film sequels, a TV series, action figures, games and so forth. Moreover, its protagonist's name eventually wound up in the Oxford English Dictionary, coming to denote "an exceptionally tough, aggressive man"...

David Morrell's First Blood was first published in hardback in the UK by Barrie & Jenkins in 1972, the same year as the US M. Evans edition. The dust jacket on the British edition differs from the American one, and was painted by Michael Codd, who, as well as illustrating a variety of jackets and paperback covers, also illustrated a number of articles in top shelf men's magazine Mayfair. As the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed, unusually for a novel, there's no text on the front of the wrapper: no title, no author name, no nothing. But if we take a look at the whole jacket:

There's the title and author credit on the back.

As with one or two others of the books I've featured in this novels-into-movies series, I think I must have borrowed First Blood from Beckenham Library sometime in the 1980s, possibly even in this edition. I bought this copy of the Jenkins first – on Amazon Marketplace – much more recently, specifically because I wanted to include it in this run of posts, but dipping into it again after all these years, I was reminded how brilliantly gripping it is. For those who've been living in a cave for the past forty years, First Blood is the story of Rambo – I don't believe he's ever given another name in the novel, although he was christened "John" for Ted Kotcheff's Sylvester Stallone-starring 1982 film adaptation – a young man hitchhiking in Kentucky who lands himself in trouble with a local Sheriff and winds up killing a cop. Thereafter he escapes into the mountains and becomes the subject of a manhunt, leading to further deaths and a bloody climax. 

The first line of the novel is still one of the best I've ever read – "His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station at the outskirts of Madison, Kentucky" – which is all the more remarkable in that First Blood was David Morrell's debut novel. He's since penned another twenty-five-plus – a handful of which I've also read and enjoyed – including novelisations of Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rambo III – this despite Rambo – and look away now if you want to avoid a major spoiler – dying at the end of the first book.

I've only ever caught parts of the two Rambo film sequels – and I've definitely not seen 2008's Stallone-directed Rambo – but I have seen First Blood the movie, and though it's neither especially faithful nor the equal of the book, it's still a decent enough adaptation. As ever with these things, though, there's more to Morrell's novel than there is to the movie – an unexpected depth which belies the book's ostensible nature as a thriller. Because of course what First Blood is really about is the Vietnam War – of which Rambo is a veteran – which, by the early 1970s, had become highly unpopular in the States, reflected in the extreme violence Rambo metes out to his pursuers (see Olman's 2010 review of the novel for more). But it also displays a visceral feel for the mountainous wilderness that Rambo flees into, informed by a novel which Morrell cites as a major influence on First Blood: Geoffrey Household's superlative manhunt classic, Rogue Male (1939).

First Blood is set in the American south, but we'll be heading even deeper south for the next book and film in this series of posts: a 1970 novel about a canoe trip that turns into a test of endurance, which begat a 1972 movie that, to my mind, is even better than the source text...

Book Review: A Rough Shoot by Geoffrey Household (Michael Joseph First Edition, 1951)

To round off this series on British writer Geoffrey Household – author, lest we forget, of Rogue Male – I have a pair of posts on two short novels written and published in quick succession in the early 1950s – one a sequel to the other, both detailing the espionage exploits of one Roger Taine. And the first of those two novels is this:

A Rough Shoot was first published in the UK in 1951 by Michael Joseph (and that same year in the US by Little, Brown), under a dustjacket designed by painter and illustrator Patrick Gierth (who also designed the jacket for the 1951 Joseph first of John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids). Originally written as a serial, it was penned in the wake of the two Middle East-set novels, Arabesque (1948) and The High Place (1950), which Household produced when he returned to writing fiction after World War II. (Following a stint in Romania for British Military Intelligence at the start of the war, Household served as a Field Security officer in the Middle East.) Neither novel matched the success of 1939's Rogue Male, however, and so, as Mike Ripley reports... 

...with no income and a new family to support, [Household] "plunged for pure speed and imagination, and produced a commercial thriller called A Rough Shoot in the hope of selling it for a serial in America" where it was indeed bought by the Saturday Evening Post. Although he at first opposed the idea of publishing the story as a book (its length is just over 40,000 words), he was persuaded, the film rights were snapped up and a sequel, A Time to Kill, rapidly followed with the result, as he wrote in 1957, "that I was typed as a thriller writer, and not a very good one at that." (Crime and Detective Stories #61, November 2011)

That last self-deprecatory remark must be taken with a healthy pinch of salt, as anyone who's read A Rough Shoot can attest: it is as pure a thriller as a person could wish for. The narrator is the aforementioned Roger Taine, a Dorset salesman who rents 450 acres of rough shooting from a local farmer, killing game "purely for the pot". One autumn evening Taine is out on the shoot when he spies two men who he takes to be commercial poachers. Taine decides to teach them a lesson, and so from a range of eighty yards lets one of them "have a charge of No. 5 shot in the seat of the pants". Unfortunately, the man falls on a strange broad spike he'd been laying on the ground, and is killed. The man's companion flees, and Taine is left with a corpse on his hands.

From there, the story takes on the trappings of a spy thriller, as Taine comes under suspicion by Robert Heyne-Hassingham, founder and leader of the People's Union, "a sort of Boys' Brigade for grown-ups, full of Ideals, Service and Religion", all of which quasi-fascism is anathema to Taine (and indeed to Household). Evidently it was one of Heyne-Hassingham's men that Taine inadvertently murdered, and before long Taine is enlisted by a Polish general named Peter Sandorski to thwart the fascist plot which quickly unfurls...

A Rough Shoot may have been written in haste for a cheque, but it's that very haste which lends the novel(la) its frantic pace. The story barrels along in a giddying fashion, barely pausing from incident to incident and all culminating in a mad dash for London by road and rail. But Household still finds time to paint a vivid picture of postwar English rural life. The author's persistent theme of the wild countryside as a place of refuge, so memorably depicted in Rogue Male when the anonymous hero-narrator – later named Raymond Ingelram – goes to ground in his burrow in Dorset, is evident here too: Taine clearly views his shoot as his haven – and woe betide anyone who disturbs it. But Household also includes wonderful, fleeting vignettes of country living, with all its peculiarities and idiosyncracies. Early on Taine lunches "at a remote pub overlooking the Blackmoor Vale, where the landlord, who was a friend of mine, always had something solid to eat which food controllers had never heard of. On this occasion it was a badger ham, and very good it was." 

A Rough Shoot is easily one of the most breathlessly exciting books I've read this year. But by all accounts the final book I'll be blogging about in this run of Geoffrey Household posts – A Time to Kill, the direct sequel to A Rough Shoot (the only sequel, aside from the much later Rogue Justice, that Household wrote) – is just as exciting. And in the edition in which I'm showcasing it, it boasts a dustjacket designed by an artist and author I recently had the great pleasure to meet...

(Incidentally – and apropos of nothing; A Rough Shoot has no real bearing on this, beyond the fact that it's one of my favourite novels of the year so far – today is my birthday. Therefore, considering you didn't get a blog post on my birthday last year – merely a preview and review – think yourselves lucky you're getting one this year – and on a Sunday, too!)

Book Review: the Sequel to Rogue Male – Rogue Justice, by Geoffrey Household

From a 1939 British first edition (third impression) of thriller writer Geoffrey Household's third novel, Rogue Male, we move on in this series of Household posts to his third-from-final novel – a book which is, in fact, a direct sequel to that hands-down classic, but published over forty years later:

Rogue Justice originally appeared in 1982, published in the UK by Michael Joseph – I blogged about that edition back 2010. The cover seen above, however, isn't that edition; it's the Top Notch Thrillers reissue, published by Mike Ripley's imprint in 2011 – just one of many overlooked thrillers that Mike has brought back into print. And it's great that Rogue Justice is widely available again, because even though it doesn't scale the lofty literary/thriller heights of its illustrious forebear, it's an intriguing novel nonetheless.

For a start, whereas in Rogue Male the identity of the European dictator the narrator attempted to assassinate at the beginning of the novel was never revealed, in Rogue Justice it's plainly stated that it was indeed Adolf Hitler. Not a huge or especially startling revelation, I know, but remember that Rogue Male was written and first published in peacetime, so basing a character on Hitler was pretty daring, even if he wasn't named. But we don't just learn the identity of the dictator in Rogue Justice: we also learn the name of the narrator of both novels. In Rogue Male, we're given to understand that our protagonist is noble enough in heritage that he's well-known in Britain, but we aren't told his name. In Rogue Justice, his name is finally revealed: Raymond Ingelram. (Curiously, in his 1977 survey Who's Who in Spy Fiction, Donald McCormick calls the narrator of Rogue Male "Sir Robert Hunter" – influenced, no doubt, by the 1976 Peter O'Toole BBC TV adaptation – an error he then repeats for his 1990 follow-up, Spy Fiction: A Connoisseur's Guide, published eight years after Household had named his lead Raymond Ingelram!)

Rogue Male ended with Ingelram determining to take another crack at killing Hitler – whose thugs murdered Ingelram's one true love – having survived a perilous pursuit by agents of Nazi Germany, in particular the cunning and savage Major Quive-Smith (or von Lauen, to give him his true name). Rogue Justice picks up his story four years later in 1942, and finds Ingelram languishing in a Rostock prison cell. As he explains, he used Quive-Smith's Nicaraguan passport – issued under the name Don Ernesto Menendez Peraza – to try and inveigle himself into German society as a Nazi sympathizer, in the hope of getting close enough to Hitler to off the bugger, but was unmasked and banged up instead. But a fortuitous RAF raid destroys the gaol in which he's being held, and he makes his escape, dressed as his now-dead captor, Hauptmann Haase.

From there, the action ranges across Nazi-occupied Europe, as, realising that he'll never be able to assassinate Hitler, Ingelram embarks instead on a quest to exact a different sort of vengeance. Effectively, he turns himself into a one-man army, falling in with the occasional resistance or guerilla movement, attacking German troops where he can, notching up a steadily increasing number of kills. In that sense, then, Rogue Justice is less focused than Rogue Male. In the former novel, Ingelram's aim was simple: to evade the enemy agents on his tail. In Rogue Justice, however, he becomes by turns pursuee, then attacker, then pursuee again, with no real purpose beyond slaughtering as many Germans soldiers as he can (and perhaps returning home to England).

But while Rogue Justice lacks Rogue Male's elegantly streamlined plot and consequent escalating tension, it does work as a kind of wartime travelogue, offering glimpses of life in occupied Poland (Ingelram has a near-brush with Auschwitz), Slovakia, Romania and Greece. And Ingelram remains an agreeable companion: resourceful (his long experience as a hunter comes in very handy here), obviously aristocratic yet never patronising towards the many downtrodden locals he meet, his observations are often barbed with a sly, witty sarcasm (Mike Ripley has written about how in Rogue Justice Household "has perfected the cool, very British (English) attitude of self-deprecation when under fire"; see this excellent Crime and Detective Stories article on the TNT/Ostara website).

Quite apart from its intriguing revelations as to the identity of the narrator of the novel (and its predecessor) and his intended target, Rogue Justice is interesting bibliographically too. The gap of forty-three years between the publication of Rogue Male and Rogue Justice must surely rank as the longest between a novel and its sequel (written by the same author) in publishing history (don't just take my word for it: Mike Ripley reckons that's the case as well). Then there's the fact that Rogue Male gained a sequel at all: Geoffrey Household didn't, as a rule, write sequels, and only one other novel in his canon besides Rogue Male was awarded a follow-up – although in that case the length of time between the two books was considerably shorter.

I'll be returning to those two novels later in this run of Household posts, but next I'll be looking at the two novels which precede Rogue Justice in Household's backlist – both of which boast cover designs by the same photographer-turned-professional fisherman responsible for the jacket photo on the Michael Joseph edition of Rogue Justice...

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household; 1939 Chatto & Windus First Edition, Services Library Wrapper, Enid Marx Cover Design

Well the entries for my splendid Ilex Gift giveaway are rolling in, so if you haven't done so already, make sure to email me via the link in that post to be in with a chance of winning all those classic comics Little Books, Journals and what have you. But back to business. And business for the foreseeable future will largely concern a British writer of thrillers, suspense novels and spy fiction (among other genres) who I've touched on a number of times previously...

Geoffrey Household (1900–1988) had twenty-eight novels and novellas, seven short story collections and one autobiography published in his lifetime, but his best known book is still his fourth – his third novel – and his first thriller (the previous two novels being a children's novella and a philosophical character study) – Rogue Male (1939). I've written about Rogue Male before, when I reviewed it alongside J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island and William Boyd's Ordinary Thunderstorms – both of which, in common with Household's novel, feature protagonists who find themselves cast adrift from society – back in 2010, eventually ranking it the fourth best book I read that year. But this elegantly written, exciting, engrossing, landmark novel has only risen in my estimations since then – I'd probably place it at number three in that chart these days, beaten only by John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Richard Stark's The Hunter – which is why, despite owning a 1949 Penguin paperback first printing of the book (in fact two copies), I bagged this more recently, from Addyman Books in Hay-on-Wye:

A 1939 Chatto & Windus UK hardback first edition. Now, this isn't the first printing of the novel; it is, in fact, the third impression, issued in the same year as the first and second impressions. True (British) first editions are extremely uncommon, and even more so in a dustjacket: there are currently just two copies of the true first on AbeBooks, both sans jacket, one for £300, the other for £450. Even secondhand book dealers of long experience, such as Any Amount of Books on London's Charing Cross Road, have never handled a jacketed copy of the book. But as you can see, this third impression does have a jacket – designed by noted painter and pattern-maker Enid Marx; Independent obituary here – although its design differs from that of the true first.

See, with the advent of the Second World War in 1939, Chatto & Windus reissued ten of their books as Services Library editions, all with suitably patriotic red, white and blue dustjackets (and possibly blue boards; my copy of Rogue Male has blue boards, as opposed to the original printing's black boards), intended for British servicemen (and women). There's a list of the Services Library books on the back of this edition of Rogue Male:

In the case of Rogue Male, I'm uncertain as to whether the novel went into the Services Library as of the second or third impression – I've never seen a picture of the second impression, let alone a copy for sale online – so I don't know if the third impression is the first appearance of the novel in the Services Library wrapper (the original wrapper shows the novel's nameless narrator lining up in his sights the equally nameless dictator – obviously intended to be Hitler – he's attempting to assassinate); if anyone owns a second impression – or indeed a first impression – and is perhaps willing to show their copy to the world, do please leave a comment below. But what I do know – or at least think I know; I could be wrong – is that the copy of Rogue Male seen in this post was the earliest jacketed printing of the Chatto & Windus first for sale online (until I bought it, that is): there is one other jacketed UK first on AbeBooks at present, but that's a fourth impression from 1941 (priced at eighty-odd quid, plus shipping from the States).

So it's a nice addition to my select Geoffrey Household collection – select, but growing, as we'll discover in this run of posts. Before we get to some of those other Household books, however – one or two of which are really quite special – I thought I'd post a review of a much later novel – one I've actually covered before (bibliographically – and bibliophiliacally – rather than critically): the 1982 sequel to Rogue Male, Rogue Justice...

2010: A Review of the Year in Books and Comics; 6. The 10 Best Books I Read This Year

Final post of the year, and what better way to round off 2010 than with a Top 10 Chart of the Best Books I Read This Year. As with almost all of these year-end posts I've been doing, however, and as the Bloody Great List of the books I read in 2010 – from whence this Top 10 is culled – demonstrated, few of the books I ploughed through over the past twelve months were particularly new. Consequently, this chart, which amongst its entries boasts just two books published in 2010, is utterly arbitrary and ultimately useless in gauging anything about the year just ended other than my reading habits. Then again, ain't that Existential Ennui all over?

Getting the list down to ten was a struggle. I initially assembled a Top 20, but while there were certainly some good books in the lower orders of that longer chart, they weren't quite as outstanding as the ones further up the list, and so made the whole thing seem slightly pedestrian. But once I'd determined to prune it, deciding what to keep and what to lose became increasingly difficult. I was stuck at thirteen for a while, then twelve, and then really dithered at eleven. Honourable mentions must therefore go to Belinda Bauer's Blacklands, to fine efforts by Gavin Lyall and Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos, to Dan Clowes's Wilson and Darwyn Cooke's Parker: The Outfit, and to more than a few Richard Stark novels, including The Man with the Getaway Face, The Score and especially The Split.

Anyway, here's the Top 10. I've reviewed a lot of these books before, so in those cases I've kept further comments to a minimum and provided a link back to the original review, should you wish to read my ramblings. All that's left to do before we get stuck in is to wish you a merry new year, and see you in the alarmingly science fiction-sounding 2011.

10. Bank Shot by Donald E. Westlake
This being a Top 10, I've had to limit my Westlake selections to one novel written under his real name and one written as Richard Stark. This own-brand excursion is the second in his comedic series starring luckless thief John Dortmunder; it's a charming, breezy affair that culminates in an increasingly ridiculous – in a good way – bit of business centring on efforts to hide a mobile bank. Go here for a longer review.

9. Ending Up by Kingsley Amis
A brilliant novel about the bitterness of old age which I had ruined for me when I happened to listen to part of a talk by Amis's most recent biographer Zachary Leader in which Leader divulges the ending of the book. Bastard. But I did discover that Amis made eight pages of notes for the novel, beginning with a list of forty-five ways of being annoying. Hopefully one of those simply states, "Zachary Leader". There's no plot to speak of, merely a sequence of short chapters detailing the minor slights, petty squabbles and general intolerance betwixt a cast of old folk living out their latter years in a country cottage. That ending, by the way, is a supreme act of character vandalism.

8. The ACME Novelty Library #20: Lint by Chris Ware
I think I said pretty much all I had to say about this one in this review. A remarkable graphic novel.

7. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
Not much more to add to this one either.

6. Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd
Or indeed this.

5. The Passage by Justin Cronin
Easily the most epic novel I read this year, The Passage is a brilliantly realised piece of horror fantasy. The descriptive passages may be a bit flowery in places, but the force of the narrative is undeniable, and Cronin's attempts to offer a scientific explanation for vampirism lends the story a certain plausibility. Partial review here.

4. Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
Review here.

3. Chinaman's Chance by Ross Thomas
Review here.

2. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre
I'm still planning on posting something on le Carre's Karla Trilogy once I've read the third book, Smiley's People. But I'll be astonished if that novel manages to top this bruised, elegiac, reflective, mournful masterpiece.

1. Point Blank (The Hunter) by Richard Stark
Donald Westlake's first novel under the Stark moniker may not be as elegantly written or exquisitely layered as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, nor its characterization and dialogue as beautifully crafted as that of Chinaman's Chance. But in terms of its importance, both to my reading this year, and to fiction in general, it can't be beat. The blunt, stripped back prose style; the cunning formal complexity; the depiction of an illegal, underground, yet strangely professional America where men steal to finance their individual versions of the American Dream: these are just some of the things that make it special. And at its heart, the thief among thieves: Parker, that weird, taciturn, detached yet utterly compelling creation. Simply the best.

Go here for the 2010 Review of the Year in Books and Comics, Part 1

Go here for the 2010 Review of the Year in Book and Comics, Part 2

Go here for the 2010 Review of the Year in Books and Comics, Part 3 

Go here for the 2010 Review of the Year in Books and Comics, Part 4

Go here for the 2010 Review of the Year in Books and Comics, Part 5

Sequels You Never Knew Existed: Rogue Justice by Geoffrey Household, Sequel to Rogue Male (Michael Joseph, 1982)

Or at least, a sequel I never knew existed, anyway.* (And that post title makes it sound like this will be the first in a series of posts, but unless I stumble upon any other books that are little-known sequels to other books, it won't. Sorry.) I found this on a trip up to London, lurking in the musty bargain basement (the book, not me; I was more browsing than lurking) of one of Charing Cross Road's dwindling number of second hand bookshops:

A UK hardback first edition of Rogue Justice by Geoffrey Household, published by Michael Joseph in 1982. It was four quid, which, it transpires, was an absolute bloody steal: there are very few copies of this edition – or indeed any edition – of the book for sale online, and those that are for sale range from £40 for a first edition with a fair jacket up to over a hundred pounds for a fine copy (which mine virtually is). In fact, there were seemingly only ever three editions of the novel: this UK Michael Joseph UK first; a 1983 US Little, Brown hardback first; and a 1984 UK Penguin paperback. In total, AbeBooks only has eleven copies, in any edition, listed for sale.

All of which is very strange, considering Rogue Justice is the sequel to one of the best known, most brilliant thrillers ever written: 1939's Rogue Male, which famously centres on an unnamed English nobleman's attempt to assassinate (and then escape from) an equally unnamed European dictator who bears more than a passing similarity to a certain A. Hitler. (Should you so wish, you can read my thoughts on it here.) When I saw this copy of Rogue Justice on the shelf, it was like one of those dreams you sometimes have about amazing books or comics (or bookshops or comic shops) that, when you wake up, don't actually exist. (Or is that just me...?) Except, in this instance, the impossible, imaginary book really did exist.

Its scarcity might be down to lack of interest/sales historically (and therefore lack of multiple editions), possibly due to the huge gap between the publication of Rogue Male and the publication of Rogue Justice – over forty years, which has to be one of the longest ever between an original and its sequel (I say "has to be", but, perhaps unsurprisingly, I haven't done any actual research to back that statement up), at least as written by the same author (there are, of course, sequels to books written by persons other than the original author published hundreds of years after the fact). Because there is that weird stigma where the longer it takes for a sequel to arrive – whether it be novels, films, albums, or whatever – the more it smacks (to some people anyway) of either desperation or a paucity of ideas. I'm not entirely sure why that is. After all, if you think about it, there's almost something more graspingly avaricious about pumping out a sequel directly after a successful work.

I don't know what the reception was for Rogue Justice when it was published nearly thirty years ago; there are various reviews online, but those are more recent, either on Amazon or on blogs. I can't find any critiques from contemporaneous newspapers or magazines, which isn't that unusual: who knows how much material there is sitting in newspapers' archives that's yet to make it online (and may never make it online). In any case, I'm still intrigued to read it. According to the blurb on the dustjacket flap (which begins, "It must be rare that an author writes a sequel to a novel published over forty years earlier"; evidently that copywriter couldn't be arsed to research what the longest gap between an original and a sequel was either), Rogue Justice picks up directly after Rogue Male, and follows our nameless but noble hero as he returns to Germany to finally off Der Fuhrer (who, unlike in Rogue Male, is actually named in this novel).

The dustjacket design on this edition is credited to Chris Yates. Now, I might be barking up not only the wrong tree but be in entirely the wrong woods here, but I have a feeling that the Chris Yates who designed this dustjacket might actually be this Chris Yates – star of BBC2's A Passion for Angling and author of a brace of books on fishing. I'm basing this wild supposition on a snippet of information I found in this interview with Chris in The Idler, where it's stated that he was once a photographer and designer working chiefly on book and album covers. So, y'know, it could be utter bollocks on my part (no change there), but it feels kind of right, so I stand by the results of my meagre research until proven otherwise.

(*It's since come to my attention that Rogue Justice was recently serialized on digital radio station BBC7. Which just goes to show what a culturally blinkered nincompoop I am.)

(UPDATE: Should you be interested, I've since reviewed Rogue Justice.)

Going Underground: Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household, Concrete Island by J. G. Ballard, and Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

Before we get to the promised cavalcade of Richard Stark/Donald Westlake Scores, I thought I'd take a slight detour to chew over some recent non-Westlake reads (yes, I do read other books). Quite by chance, I've read three books in quick succession over the past few weeks where the main protagonist finds himself cast away or trapped in a small patch of land. Two of the books are actually very similar in their choice of urban location, while the third is more rural, but still bears a remarkable similarity to the others.

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household was the first of this triumvirate I read, and the most rural. Originally published in 1939, it's the first-person account of an unnamed British man (who, though nameless, hints throughout that he is a Lord, and well-recognised in England), his unsuccessful attempt to assassinate a European dictator, and his subsequent escape into the English countryside, all the while pursued by agents of the dictator. There's an extended sequence in the novel where our hero digs himself a burrow in the Dorset moors, and it's this section that's the most compelling and bears the most resemblance to the other two books, as he gradually loses all trace of his previously civilized nature and sinks into a filthy, degraded, but also strangely alluring existence.

Alluring, because it's at this point that he seems most free, and most happy, despite the squalor he's living in. Reduced to merely surviving, any and all problems melt away in the face of more immediate concerns: finding food, keeping warm. It's an extremely simplified way of life, but one our hero almost revels in, particularly when he is granted the occasional company of a grumpy, feral cat.

It's this acceptance of, and in turn embracing of, a downgraded existence that I was reminded of when I was reading the second book, William Boyd's Ordinary Thunderstorms (2009). Here, a young man called Adam Kindred is being hunted for a murder he didn't commit, so, much like Household's character, he removes himself from society and in this case goes underground in London. Again, as he divests himself of the trappings of civilization – he can't use his credit cards or contact anyone lest he be tracked – he finds a kind of peace in a triangle of overgrown wasteland near Chelsea Bridge, with a camping stove to heat his tins of beans and three old tyres fashioned into a chair.

Even when he's forced to leave this patch of ground and starts to slowly rejoin society, Kindred feels the occasional pang for his lost parcel of land, much as Rogue Male's protagonist is reluctant to leave his lair. And once again, this is probably the most vivid part of the novel, enjoyable though the subsequent chapters are. Like Household, Boyd, through Kindred, seems to be yearning for a simpler way of life, one where a small triangle of land can offer more fulfillment than a wider life of conspicuous consumption – even if it does mean having to snack on the occasional seagull.

Of course, the protagonist in the third novel of our triumvirate has even less choice in the matter than either Kindred or Lord No-Name: in J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island (1973), an architect named Robert Maitland crashes through a barrier on London's Westway onto another triangle of wasteland, and becomes trapped. His injuries prevent him from escaping, and in any case no one will stop to help him. I'm only a third of the way through the book at the moment, so I don't know if Maitland will come to embrace his new existence, but it's still striking that both Maitland and Kindred wind up in triangles of land in west London, only a couple of miles apart.

It's too early to pass judgment on Concrete Island yet, but the other two novels are both fine works. Household has a clipped style befitting his ennobled narrator, while Boyd's early tendency to pepper his prose with off-piste words – a boscy here, a ratiocination there – settles down once the narrative starts to gain momentum. But both books paint compelling portraits of individuals cast adrift from mainstream society, and, possibly with Concrete Island (we shall see...), show that going underground needn't necessarily be such a bad thing. Seagull snacking aside.

The Island Without Any Bookshops

Actually that's not quite true: Guernsey does have some bookshops. It's just they're of the WHSmiths variety: new books only, and a limited selection at that.

Yes, I'm back from a week's break in the Channel Island known as Guernsey, where you'd think, with a population of 65,000, there might be a second hand bookshop or two. But no. You'd be wrong. They do have the occasional book fair there – I missed the most recent one by a matter of days – but no second hand bookshops, as a befuddled man in a stamp and postcard collectors' shop explained to me. Still, they do have a lovely coastline:













so it's not all bad. And of course I did manage to ferret out a few books here and there in charity shops and the like, including at one point a little stall by the side of the road (Guernsey is dotted with little boxes on garden walls containing what's known as 'hedge veg': local produce for sale to anyone passing):













That's me having a rummage. I didn't find anything there, but I did pick these up elsewhere:













A 1971 UK first edition of Hammond Innes' Lekvas Man, published in hardback by Collins, and a 1984 UK first edition of Frederick Forsyth's The Fourth Protocol, published in hardback by Hutchinson. Not exactly scarce either of 'em, but at 50p apiece I can't really complain, and with so few books on offer on the island, well, beggars can't be choosers. Not sure if the Innes will be my cup of tea, but I liked the jacket, which was designed by Richard Dalkins. As for the Forsyth, I read The Day of the Jackal years and years ago, and The Fourth Protocol is supposed to be a solid read. The jacket was designed by Raymond Hawkey, who I've mentioned before, and which I was surprised about: it's not particularly creative. I mean, it's striking enough, but not up there with, say, The Book of Bond.

I did manage to polish off a couple of books in the past week: Richard Stark's The Black Ice Score and Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, but I'll blog about those separately. So yes. I'm back. Hang out the fecking bunting.

Latest Arrival

A warm welcome, please, to the latest addition to my burgeoning paperback collection:











A 1949 first Penguin edition of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male. I've seen one other copy of this edition online, but that listing's now vanished (and was more expensive than my copy anyway). Looking forward to reading this one: for those who don't know, it was originally published in 1939, and is about a sportsman and hunter who elects to stalk and possibly kill a European dictator, modelled on Adolf Hitler. Which, it has to be said, is a brilliant notion for a novel at that time (and even today).

Speaking of reading, I've just started George Pelecanos' The Way Home, and it's already utterly compelling. It follows a young guy, Chris, a ne'er-do-well who gets sent to a young offenders institution. That's all I know so far, but Pelecanos draws his characters so deftly in such a short space of time (without reams of description) that you're hooked almost from the off.














God I love books.

Latest Arrivals

Rather excitingly, there were two – count 'em, two – packages waiting for me at home yesterday:













That's a first UK edition of Fletch and a first UK edition of Confess, Fletch, the sequel. (And that's my hand holding both.) Except, on closer inspection, Confess, Fletch turns out to be a book club edition. Gah! What was I saying about the internet being trustworthy? Ah well, never mind. It was only a quid, and aside from the "BCA" logo on the case spine (but not on the jacket) and the lack of a price on the front flap, you wouldn't know the difference. It must've been a book club run-on from the first edition, as the inside bears the Gollancz logo and no mention of it being a book club edition. It'll do me. (Unless I change my mind and get another copy... there seem to be a few cheap ones on AbeBooks... no... must resist... that way lies MADNESS.)

As for Fletch, that's definitely a first edition, but it's ex-library. However it's in nice condition, no pages removed, the only evidence of it being ex-library a small "Cumbria County Library" stamp on the copyright page (and it's price-clipped of course). So I'm very pleased with that one. I started reading it last night; I read most of the Fletch novels years ago (borrowed from the library, natch, so those yellow Gollancz covers are very familiar), and re-reading it now it surprised me how close it is initially to the Chevy Chase movie, Fletch coming across in the book as quite the wise-ass. And it is as description-light/dialogue-dense as I remembered.

In other book news, I've got my eye on eBay on a 1949 Penguin edition of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, and elsewhere on the web on a 1944 British Publishers Guild edition of the same novel. I'm also toying with getting a first Pan edition of From Russia with Love, and keeping my eye out for old editions of Richard Stark's The Hunter (or Point Blank, as it was first published in the UK to tie in with the Lee Marvin film) and Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me (now made into a film by Michael Winterbottom, of 24 Hour Party People fame). And I'd quite like to get my hands on a copy of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War. It piqued my curiosity when I was working on a book about cult books recently.

On the reading front, I polished off Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island in short order. Really enjoyed it, but without spoiling it, it does leave you with a slight feeling of what I like to call Boxing Helena Syndrome. If you know that film, you'll have an inkling of what I'm on about (although Shutter Island is nowhere near the level of utter shitness that Boxing Helena resides on). Currently I'm reading Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train, which, like many of her books, I initially struggled to get into, but now it's starting to grip. And I've begun another Bond, Moonraker this time, which starts with a great description of Bond's day-to-day office life when he's not on assignment (according to the novel, he only has a couple of assignments a year).