A Rough Shoot

Author: Geoffrey Household
Published: Michael Joseph Ltd 1951
Pictured: J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd Paperback 1984

I love the ‘innocent bystander’ type spy story. I have talked about them before. They are the classic wrong place at the wrong time scenario. It is the innocent person who stumbles in on an incident or who gets caught up in the web of intrigue by accident. The classic example would have to be, The 39 Steps where Richard Hannay by shear happenstance gets caught up with foreign spies. The thing is, however, many of these stories are extremely contrived at the beginning to drag the ‘innocent bystander’ into the shenanigans.

A Rough Shoot has a very novel approach to this problem, but before I explain how our hero, Roger Taine, is drawn into the story, I’ll outline a little of the background. Firstly, I’ll explain what a ‘shoot’ is. In this instance, it is a property, called Blossom’s Farm in Dorset. Roger Taine has bought the shooting rights to the property. That is he is allowed to hunt all the game on the property. Anyone else, who takes a pot shot at some pheasant or rabbits on the property is a poacher.

As the story begins, Taine is on his shoot, when he spies two men on his property. Naturally he thinks they are poachers and decides to teach them – at least one of them – a lesson. He fires a load of buckshot into the backside of one of the poachers. Upon hearing the shot, the second poacher scarpers. The first however, the one who was shot, falls over and impales himself on a spike he had been setting up. The spike pierces his heart, and the man dies.

Taine wanted to teach the man a tweezers and Mercurochrome lesson, but not kill him. Taine panics. He has a young family, and even though it was an accident, he doesn’t want to spend time behind bars for manslaughter. So he does what any normal man in his position would do – he buries the body on the shoot and pretends the incident never occurred.

But now Taine is on edge. He is waiting for the knock on the door from the police – but strangely the ‘knock’ never comes. Now there’s a reason that the police haven’t come for Taine – and that’s simply because no one has reported a crime or a missing person to the police. Now what type of people wouldn’t report a murder to the police? The type who don’t want the police to know what they are doing.

One person who has an idea of what’s going on is a Polish General named Sandorski. Sandorski is a strange sort of freelance secret agent. From page 31 (Taine’s summation of Sandorski):

I don’t know how many secret organizations he served when it suited him – indeed, I doubt if he knew himself – but one was his own, formed by him and let by him.

While performing one of his missions in Germany, interrogating a professional thug, Sandorski hears that he has been accused of killing a man in Dorset. Of course Sandorski did no such thing, but the blame has fallen on him so he sets off for England and to Dorset. There he sits around and watches and waits. One weekend, when Taine is shooting game, Sandorski approaches him with the suggestion that it was Taine who killed the missing gentleman.

Taine doesn’t admit to the crime, but asks why Sandorski would believe such a thing. It comes down to the simple fact, that Taine is the only one in the vicinity with the shooting skills to do so. But Sandorski isn’t after Taine. He’s after a secret spy ring, that have been operating in the area.

The spikes that the alleged ‘poachers’ had been setting up at the beginning, were actually the legs for a series of homing beacons, which the aircraft would use to land safely on Taine’s shoot. The willful and impulsive Sandorski enlists Taine’s aid to move the beacons, so the plane will in fact land in another location, giving them time to discover who and what is on board.

A Rough Shoot is a very short book, barely more than a novella, and it is fast paced – so most readers would knock this over in an evening. Geoffrey Household adopts the first person narrative style he used so well in Rogue Male, and so at times the story seems to be cut from a similar cloth, but in reality this story is less substantial than Rogue Male – and at times, primarily due to the actions of General Sandorski, it almost becomes light comedy. None-the-less, A Rough Shoot is a pleasant diversion for an evening and a fascinating companion piece to the harder Rogue Male.

Free Country

Author: Jeremy Duns
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: August 2010

For the past few days, I have been looking at Geoffrey Household’s book Rogue Male. It is a testament to the strength of the novel, that its impact can still be felt in contemporary spy novels. Today, I am going to look at Free Country, the second novel in Jeremy Duns’ Paul Dark trilogy – the first novel being Free Agent which was published last year. Free Country is a novel that proudly continues the ‘manhunt’ tradition in which Rogue Male excels.

As the story begins, MI6 operative Paul Dark, who in Free Agent was revealed to be a Soviet double agent, has been  promoted to deputy chief of the service and is giving an eulogy at the funeral service for the previous chief. The irony is that it is in fact Dark who shot down his chief in the opening chapters of the previous novel.

During his speech, a sniper opens fire, but misses his intended target, Dark, and instead kills the new section chief. Dark pursues the sniper on foot, both men darting through the streets of London. This is where the comparison with Household’s Rogue Male begins. Both books open with an assassination attempt by a sniper. But Free Country is told from the perspective of the victim, where Rogue Male is told from the viewpoint of the assassin. It’s almost as if Duns has chosen to twist Rogue Male inside out. The comparison doesn’t end there. Allow me to share with you a few of paragraphs. These first few are from Free Country (used with the permission of the author).

Page 16 – after a dance on the platform and carriages between the ‘hunted’ and the protagonist on a train:

I followed, but then the sniper did an extraordinary thing – he let go of the boy and ran down the ramp at the end of the platform and into the tunnel. For a moment I thought it was suicide, but then I remembered there was some space next to the tracks for the Underground staff to use. As I reached the end of the platform, I could see he was running down it…

…up ahead I could see the tunnel curving away towards Farringdon, but he couldn’t possibly have reached the bend already. Was he hiding somewhere in the tunnel waiting for me?

These next few paragraphs are from Rogue Male.

Page 62-63 – after a dance on the platform and carriages between the ‘hunter’ and the protagonist on a train:

Beyond the Aldwych station there seemed to be some fifty yards of straight tube, and then a curve, its walls faintly visible in a gleam of grey light. Where the tunnel goes, or if it ends in an old shaft after the curve, I didn’t have time to find out.

Black Hat looked through the coach and saw that I wasn’t in it. The train pulled out, and when its roar had died away there was absolute silence. I hadn’t realised that Black Hat and I would be left alone a hundred feet under London. I lay flattened against a wall in the darkest section of the tunnel.

I can still hear them, and the sound of the steps and his scream and the hideous, because domestic, sound of sizzling. They echoed along that tunnel which leads lord knows where. A queer place for a soul to find itself adrift.

As you can plainly read, the scenarios are vastly different but drinking from the same well. Once again, it is almost as if Duns has reversed the scene – telling it from the view point of the assassin. But it is plain to see that Duns has an affection for Rogue Male and certain set-pieces within the story.

But back to Free Country: The Heads of the British Intelligence communities do not realise that Dark was the target for the assassin’s bullet, and believe it was a brazen attack by Soviet backed terror cell out of Italy called ‘Arte come Terrore’. Dark is sent to Rome to hunt down and kill the man responsible.

The story breathlessly twists and turns from one situation and once you believe that Dark has the situation in hand, Duns pulls another reversal and the story veers off in another unpredictable direction. After Rome, the story bounds to Sardinia, and then is derailed to Turin. There is also an insightful flashback to Istanbul, that not not only fleshes out a section a Dark’s history, but in turn also helps to move the story forward in the present (that present being 1969, when the story is set). There’s also a nice plot point that runs parallel to the defection of Burgess and Maclean.

In many ways, Free Country is a superior novel to Free Agent. I have to choose my words carefully here, because I don’t want to give the wrong impression about the first book in the trilogy, Free Agent. The fact is I thought Free Agent was very good, and the second half of the story rocketed along at tremendous pace. But Free Country, is a more consistent book. It starts at a cracking pace, and then never lets up, twisting and turning as it goes.

Duns, on his blog The Debrief, recently outlined how his writing had changed since writing Free Agent.

My methodology changed somewhat between writing my first and second novels: it became less structured. I wrote Free Agent in the evenings and weekends, handing in new chapters to a writing group as I went along. I wrote my second as a full-time author in a year. I was naturally worried that it wouldn’t be as good as my first, which took me seven years to write (albeit with a full-time job and no external deadline).

I would suggest being able to write Free Country, in what was virtually an uninterrupted block, as opposed to over seven years, where ideas and even points-of-view about life can change, has resulted in a noticeably more consistent novel. It is a more relaxed novel. Not relaxed in pace – no that’s cracking – but in Duns’ story telling. He seems more comfortable with the tale he is telling and the characters who inhabit it – and is not afraid to throw in a few subtle asides alluding to the pedigree of his story – whether that be a nod in the direction of Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male – or references to a lucky chap, who was able to escape the English winter, by traipsing to Jamaica every year in May (Remind you of anyone?). These asides don’t intrude on the story, they are simply nuggets for the knowledgeable, and simply show how comfortable Duns is as he applies himself to his craft.

In closing, I’d recommend Free Country to all fans of fast paced thriller fiction. I must point out though, that there is quite a heavy back-story carried over from Free Agent, so I would suggest that you don’t launch into Free Country until you have read the first book – that done, then it’s full steam ahead. Once again, Jeremy Duns serves up a cracking espionage novel that can be enjoyed by both hardened spy novel fans, and those who are seeking a solid fast paced thriller.

Mud, Blood and Torture

When American President Ronald Reagan mentioned that he had watched Rambo: First Blood Pt II prior to a press conference in 1985, it catapulted the character of John Rambo into popular culture. He became an icon of the 1980s. Even today, most people know who the character is – their memories being refreshed by a sequel in 2008, and even The Expendables evokes Sylvester Stallone’s cinematic past.

Rambo captured the imagination of the public by being an old-fashioned hero who lived off his wits and the land. As the world became more and more high-tech, the Rambo films went to pains to prove that sometimes the old ways were the best. This is highlighted at the beginning of First Blood: Part II, when he is about to parachute into Vietnam armed with an arsenal of high-tech equipment. As he jumps, he gets tangled and is being dragged along behind the plane. The solution is to cut away (and discard) all the modern devices, and go in with little more than a bow and arrow, and a knife.

John Rambo echoes another hero – the un-named hero of Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male, who finds that despite being an English aristocrat, with high-powered friends, the city; the modern world are unable to help him. Instead he chooses to fight his battle on his own terms, in the countryside; and environment he is familiar with – the old fashioned way.

Rambo vs Rogue Male

PLEASE NOTE: I have not read the book First Blood by David Morrell (an oversight on my behalf). Therefore the Rambo references below are taken from the original Ted Kotcheff film (and its sequels).

Obviously Vietnam veteran John Rambo and the un-named hero from Rogue Male, who I’ll call Robert Hunter – lifted from the 1976 film for simplicity sake – are two very different characters. But there are a few very striking similarities that are worth investigating.

Firstly both stories are ‘manhunts’, although the reasons for the hunts are very different. Robert Hunter is being sort after a failed attempt to assassinate Adolph Hitler. Rambo is being pursued for breaking out of jail, after being arrested for vagrancy. The difference is quite apparent. Hunter was the instigator of the events which lead to his pursuit, however Rambo was the innocent (?) victim due to the over-zealous action of a small town police Sheriff. But when Rambo is pushed, he chooses to push back, making him temporarily the aggressor. It’s this action that makes him the object of his particular manhunt.

Both men fear incarceration from their pursuers, due to having been tortured. Hunter was severely tortured by the Gestapo or SS (it is never really made clear) after being captured. Upon capture, if he is extradited back to Germany, he can be assured much worse will happen. Rambo was captured by the Viet-cong during the war and tortured. And while the Viet-cong are not pursuing him in First Blood, Rambo has been psychologically scarred – possibly unhinged – due to the experience. When the police rough-house him at the station, he flashes back to Vietnam. Unreasonably, for him, the police become the same as the Viet-cong.

Next, both characters feel the best place to allude their pursuers is not the crowded city, but the isolated natural forest (and countryside) environs in which they feel comfortable. Both men are more than capable of living off the land. It could be said that both men are ‘hunters’. Hunter (the choice of name probably gives that away!) of big game, and Rambo, of men. They can blend into natural landscapes, and in some ways, due to their hunting experience, anticipate how their pursuers will react within the environment.

Hunter and Rambo both seek refuge in a cave. And they also both trapped in their caves by their pursuers, but are able to find ways out of their individual confined predicaments.

Where the characters and stories diverge is at the resolution and what each of the characters want to achieve from the conflict. Hunter simply wants to be left alone, hopefully so he can escape to Latin America or Africa, where he can start a new life. Rambo, however, has had some kind of switch flicked in his head. He is in ‘war’ mode. There is no sense of purpose or objectives in his actions beyond ‘fight’ and ‘survive’. An interesting comparison may be drawn between Rambo and Hunter at the beginning of Rogue Male, where Hunter was in ‘survival mode’ but he certainly didn’t have the skills or the strength to fight.

It could be argued that were it not for the intervention of Colonel Trautman, Rambo would have kept on fighting and possibly killing. It must be pointed out though, that in First Blood, only one man is killed (compared to First Blood: Part II where Rambo kills fifty-six people). Even then, in First Blood, the killing is an accident, when Rambo throws a stone at the helicopter pursuing him.

Sir Robert Hunter, may seem like a more sedate character than Rambo, but he in fact kills two people in Rogue Male, first the assassin at Aldwych train station, and finally Major Quive-Smith at the very denouement.

You may think I am being a little bit extreme in trying to link the character of John Rambo and the nameless character in Geoffrey Household’s novel, but even David Morrell has freely acknowledged that Rogue Male was a big influence on his story First Blood, – you can read an interview with Morrell at Book Reporter.com – The March 23, 2007 Interview is of the most interest – it’s about half way down the page.

Tomorrow I will look at another author whose work has been heavily influenced by Rogue Male. But until then, here’s some footage from the opening of the 1976 BBC adaptation of Rogue Male, starring Peter O’Toole. Uploaded to Youtube by prsurr1066

Rogue Male (1976)

Country: United Kingdom
Director: Clive Donner
Starring: Peter O’Toole, John Standing, Alastair Sim, Harold Pinter, Michael Byrne, Mark McManus, Ray Smith
Music: Chris Gunning
Based on the novel by Geoffrey Household

This version of Rogue Male is allegedly a birthday present from Peter O’Toole, to his wife, Sian, based on her favourite novel. I must say it is a strange birthday gift, as this version doesn’t shy away from the brutality at the beginning of Household’s novel. It would seem strange to present a wife with images of her husband bloodied and being beaten to a pulp as a gift. But I guess it is only a film – all make believe, and if it indeed was her favourite book, I am sure she  knew what she was in for.

In this version, the un-named hero, is once again given a name, and this time it is Sir Robert Hunter, which I guess is pretty unsubtle – the hunter happens to be named Hunter.

The story starts in a way that should be becoming familiar to those you have being following the posts over the last couple of days. Hunter, is in Germany, and preparing to shoot Adolph Hitler. He is caught at the last moment, and brutally interrogated by the Nazis.

There is a nice little nod to Geoffrey Household, as Hunter is being interrogated. The Nazi Interrogator, played by Michael Byrne describes Hunter, not only as a professional hunter, but the author of a book on hunting called ‘Rough Shooting’. Household himself, wrote a book called A Rough Shoot which was released in 1951. While A Rough Shoot is not as good as Rogue Male, it is still a very entertaining story, with many similar elements to Rogue Male (stay tuned later in the week for a brief review).

Hunter is pushed off a cliff in the attempt to make his death look like an accident. The fall should hide the tell-tale signs of the brutal interrogation – even the ripped out fingernails, can be explained away, by his clawing for a grip as he falls. But Hunter does not die, and although unable to walk, manages to slither to a place of sanctuary, where he can regain his strength.

Hunter then manages to find passage, hidden on a steamer, back to England, where he assumes that his status as an aristocrat, and high-powered friends will protect him. His assumptions are incorrect, and teams of Nazi spies scour the city for him. Among them is a gentleman named Major Quive-Smith.

In this version, Hunter’s reason for the assassination attempt is brought to the fore from the very outset, with sporadic flashbacks, showing the love of Hunter’s life, a radical named Rebecca (Cyd Hayman), being tied to a stake and shot by her Nazi captors. Presenting the reason for Hunter’s actions from the outset slightly diminishes the ‘why’ or ‘how could he’ factor, that both Household’s book, and Fritz Lang’s film version, Man Hunt, both possess. But then I guess, in 1939 (Rogue Male) and 1941 (Man Hunt) Hitler was alive and a world leader. The ‘why’ factor was more important. However in 1976 Hitler was history – and rather unpleasant history. I guess ‘why’ didn’t matter anymore, it was more ‘why not’! Bad luck he didn’t succeed.

The truncating of certain events in the middle of the story make certain scenes redundant, or at the least, make little sense – such as the letter that Hunter receives at the post-office addressed to Professor Farnsborough. It is essential that the character receives the letter, as Hunter’s confrontation with the post-mistress is essential to the next portion of the story. But here, the whole buildup has been removed. Why did Hunter break cover to go to the post-office? Why was he addressed as Professor Farnsborough? As the story stands now, it is a clumsy adjunct that only serves to move the plot along – that is, unless you’re very familiar with Household’s novel and are then able to fill in the blanks for yourself.

I guess that’s the problem that all writers face when they are charged with adapting any written piece (but more so, if it is as well read and highly regarded as Rogue Male). The question is, what do you leave in, and what do you sacrifice? The truth is however, that the screenplay by Frederick Raphael (and edited by Richard Brooke) is pretty good. It covers the beginning and the climax exceptionally well. It is only in the middle, where the story veers into the psychological game of cat and mouse that the script falls flat.

The ending is very well played out, with John Standing as Major Quive-Smith being an excellent foil for O’Toole as Hunter. Overall this is quite an accurate adaptation, but it doesn’t really have the same sense of pursuit, or ‘the hunt’ that it should have. Hunter is rarely seen watching and waiting; being patient, and then knowing how a given beast will react under certain circumstances. In this case, the beast happens to be man. But then again, cinematically speaking, these type of scenes, ‘watching’ and ‘waiting’ don’t make for the most engaging viewing. But despite my misgivings, this is actually a good film – the beginning and the end, nail Household’s Rogue Male.

Man Hunt (1941)

Country: United States
Director: Fritz Lang
Starring: Walter Pidgeon, George Sanders, Joan Bennett, John Carradine, Roddy McDowall, Ludwig Stössel, Heather Thatcher, Frederick Worlock, Holmes Herbert
Music: Alfred Newman
Based on the novel ‘Rogue Male’ by Geoffrey Household

Geoffrey Household’s book, Rogue Male, caused a sensation upon release. The sheer simple idea that a man could go out and hunt down a world leader was somewhat shocking – even if that leader was Adolph Hitler. Remember that England and the United States had not entered the war when the book was written. Hitler wasn’t portrayed as quite the villain that history has proven him to be.

It is not so surprising then that Hollywood should snap up the film rights to Rogue Male. Twentieth Century Fox bought the rights, and although the book was a sensational talking point, it was a film that would be very hard to make due to the ‘Neutrality Act’, which forbade movie productions taking a side in the war. Of course, by this time, England was at war with Germany, and any overt pro-England message within the film had to be muted quite substantially.

Let’s face it, if you were intending to abide by the Neutrality Act, then Rogue Male is not the best material for an adaptation – essentially the story of an English aristocrat who attempts to assassinate the Fuhrer, who then alludes and outwits the best of Germany’s spies and agents.

Many of Hollywood’s higher profile directors, such as John Ford were approached to direct the film, but eventually the film fell in to the lap of Fritz Lang. Lang had just fled from Nazi Germany to the United States and still had not re-established himself as a major director.

The story about Lang is a quite complicated one, and many scholars seem to debate the veracity of the story, but it seems Lang, whose Grandmother was Jewish was approached by Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebels to be Germany’s head of film-making. Lang, although he didn’t want the job as he was anti-Nazi, accepted the position, and over the next six months formulated his plan to escape to the United States (there are versions of the story which suggest he left the very next day).

Now in America, Manhunt was to be Lang’s opportunity to prove that he was not a Nazi, which he did rather effectively if not so subtly. The film did not escape the view of the moral and political guardians at the time, and the film-makers were requested to appear at a hearing to defend their apparent defiance of the Neutrality Act. However, the attack on Pearl Harbour, and America’s entry into the war, led to the hearing being cancelled.

Lang would go onto to direct the similarly themed Ministry of Fear (1944) based on Graham Greene’s novel. In fact if you look back over the whole body of Lang’s work, there is a definite theme of espionage, political intrigue and corruption. Whether it be the shady world of Dr. Mabuse, the organised vigilantism of M, or even to the mechanised Maria in Metropolis, who evokes comparison with Mata Hari in an erotic cabaret act that she performs. Lang seemed to have a thing for the ‘hidden’ and ‘secret’ elements of society.

In Manhunt, Household’s un-named protagonist is given a name and it’s Alan Thorndike, played by Walter Pidgeon. The film opens pretty much the same as the book, with Thorndike stalking Adolph Hitler, and at the last second before he could have pulled the trigger – we never no for a fact if he would – he is pounced upon by a German guard doing his rounds.

Captured, Thorndike is brought before German officer, Major Quive-Smith (George Sanders) for interrogation. Quive-Smith has Thorndike worked over until his identity can be verified. However, when it is revealed that Thorndike is exactly who he claims to be – and that just happens to be an aristocrat with connections in the British government – this presents another problem for the Nazis.

Due to Thorndike’s status – and the fact that they are not at war with England – they cannot very well kill him. It would cause an outrage. However, they cannot allow him to go free. If the story of an assassination attempt on the Fuhrer, and an almost successful attempt at that, was to reach the press and the people, then it would be a major embarrassment for the Nazi regime. The solution is to fake an accident. Throndike is pushed over the edge of a cliff. But of course, somehow he manages to survive and eventually, after stowing away on board a ship, with the help of the cabin boy, Vaner (an incredibly young Roddy McDowell), he makes it back home to England.

Thorndike’s troubles don’t end there. His story, if it were to leak out, still presents a danger to the Nazis, so they engage all their agents in England to track him down. Along the way, Thorndike enlists the aid of a young girl, Jerri (Joan Bennett) who hides him. Jerri, as a romantic subplot, almost seems shoehorned into the story – and at times comes close of pushing the story into ‘screwball farce’ territory – but thankfully it doesn’t quite cross that line. Allegedly, in the script, Jerri was to be a prostitute, which sort of rings true, with the way the other characters interact with her. However, in the film, she claims to be a seamstress.

The key difference between Manhunt the film, and Rogue Male the novel, is in the handling of the love interest in the story. In Rogue Male, it’s almost half way through the story before there is even a mention of the woman – and then it is not until almost the end of the story that we find find out who she is and what she meant to the protagonist. In fact we find out that she was the reason for the hero’s attempt on Hitler’s life. In Manhunt, however, it has been changed quite significantly. Thorndike did not go to Germany to avenge a loved one, but as the conceit of the original story suggests, to simply see if it is possible to hunt and stalk Hitler – a ‘sporting stalk’. Later in the movie, Thorndike confesses that he did actually intend to shoot and kill Hitler – although the film in its opening sequence is quite playful in the notion, and suggest that the stalk is indeed just for fun.

But back to the girl. In Manhunt, the love interest is Jerry Stokes (Joan Bennett). In London, as Thorndike attempt to elude the spies on his trail, seeking refuge, he unwittingly draws Jerry into the web of danger. As the scenario plays out, a relationship develops between the two. It isn’t a sexual relationship. Thorndike is more like a father figure or an older brother – and during the film, director Fritz Lang, never allows the relationship to develop into being a piece of sentimental schmaltz. None-the-less, once the relationship is established, and despite the fact that they don’t even share a kiss, it is very clear that the couple have feelings for each other.

The only real attempt to soften the story (apart from showing the brutalities of Thorndike’s torture at the hands of the Nasis) is the casting of George Sanders as Major Quive-Smith. Sanders is so quintessentially English and charming, that despite being a thoroughly despicable and reprehensible character, that he falls just a fraction short of being likable.

Sanders, time and time again, has proved that he is adept at playing suave and sophisticated characters, such as The Saint and The Falcon. In Manhunt, he retains his veneer of sophistication, but stills lays down quite a cool line in menace – admittedly aided by some stunning cinematography and lighting.

Manhunt, for the sake of simplicity, chooses to roll of Thorndike’s torturer and the hunter on his tail, into one character, that being Quive-Smith. The earlier scenes, allow Quive-Smith to be a much more rounded character in the film, than in the book. In the book, he comes off little more than a mercenary called in at the end to tie up the loose ends. By placing Quive-Smith at the forefront of the story, the similarity between the men – both big game hunters – can be played out further. And also, Quive-Smith’s stake in the story is fleshed out. He wants to capture Thorndike because he escaped from right under his nose. The political ramifications could and would be his undoing.

Towards the end, as Major Quive-Smith has Thorndike trapped in his cave, the Major reveals that he has killed Jerry – or at least had her killed on his orders. This has happened off screen of course, but it is enough to turn Thorndike into a defiant warrior. He is no longer a man, who simply wishes to fade into the shadows, with the possibility of later, beginning a new life. Instead he becomes proactive in MacGuyvering an escape option. And then once he has escaped and ensured his vengeance against Quive-Smith, Thorndike feels compelled to join the war effort. By this time, in the film, England has gone to war with Germany.

So in the last few frames, the film becomes a propaganda piece. And generally, while this does not detract from the story at all, it changes the basic premise. While Rogue Male may be considered a warning about the potential for horror that a Nazi regime could bring to Europe, Manhunt is a call to arms.

Don’t get me wrong, Manhunt is still a very good film, and it is a fine adaptation of Household’s novel, but it is sort of like comparing a Big Mac to a Whopper – they both have a lot of meat, but they taste very different!

For a second opinion, read Tanner’s review at the Double-O-Section.

Rogue Male

Author: Geoffrey Household
Publisher: Chatto & Windus
First published: 1939
Pictured: Penguin Books paperback edition 1979

As someone who loves to read spy thrillers, I often find myself reading books that – to put it simply – are ‘old’. And I’ll admit, that while I enjoy reading these historical pieces, that due to the advancement of civilisation and  the presentation of literature as entertainment, that these books can be hard going. Then along comes a book like Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male. It was written in 1939, just prior to England entering WWII. Despite being written in peace time (well, you know what I mean – this is not a war story), and the story being over seventy years old, the first twenty-five pages of this book are some of the most heart-pounding and visceral story-telling ever recorded.  I’d put Rogue Male alongside any modern thriller for pure and simple brutal thrills. I know I am over-doing the gilt-edged hyperbole, but damn this book is good.

The thing that separates it from so many other stories from the era is Household’s voice as a writer. Rogue Male is written in the first person and the character’s word and thoughts really drag you into the story despite the central conceit of the story – which is pretty screwy. But I’ll talk more about that in a moment.

The plot is about an un-named British aristocrat, who is a legendary sporting shooter. So much so that his reputation has spread throughout Europe (and one suspects India, as he mentions Tigers at one point). As a hunter he has very few peers. But our hero, while seeking diversion and thrills, decides to embark on the greatest hunt of his life – the hunt for a man – the most closely guarded and well protected man in the world.

In the book, the target of the hunt is never mentioned, or even the country in which the hunt occurs, but there is more than enough clues to suggest the target is Adolph Hitler – and the story begins in Germany. And of course, the book cover above – from the Penguin edition – with an image of Hitler confirms that indeed Hitler is the target.

The conceit of the story is that out hero claims to have never intended to shoot and kill Hitler. The stalk was a self-imposed test of his manhood and hunting skills. To get Hitler in his sights; to prove that he could do it, was simply enough. But as the character is caught with a rifle in his hands, drawing a bead on the Fuhrer, it’s a story that very few people are likely to believe. And even if it is true, the tale of such a monumental security breach, cannot be allowed to become public knowledge.

The story is not told in a linear fashion. It is more like the fractured ramblings of the participant after the fact, and as he remembers the individual episodes. As the story opens, after being brutally tortured, our hero is pushed off the side of a cliff to fall to his death. As England is not at war with Germany (at this stage), and so our hero is not the enemy, his death is to be staged to look like an accident. The trouble is that our un-named protagonist isn’t killed by the fall. He lives. Battered and bruised, racked with pain, he crawls to freedom, continually, and most importantly ‘instinctively’ outwitting and eluding his pursuers.

As our hero hits the shores of Britain, he believes that his position in society and his friends in the Government will protect him, but this is quickly revealed not to be the case. Assassin’s and spies are on his trail. Whether their intention is to kill him, or bring him back to Germany isn’t defined by this stage.

When a team of spies follow him to Underground Metro Station, he manages to allude most of them, but one man sees through his chicanery as he hops on and off the trains. Near Aldwych Station, the spy follows our hero into a train tunnel, and after a scuffle, the spy is electrocuted when he touches the third rail.

Now our hero is also suspected of murder, so not only are a cadre of Nazi spies on his trail, but also the local police are hunting him as well. He has become Great Britain’s ‘Most Wanted’. With his notoriety, he has even become an embarrassment to his friends, and he decides that it is best if he leaves London, so he buys a few items for a camping expedition and sets off to the wilds of Dorset – to lie low for a while. And then, if possible, once the dust has settled, catch a steamer to South America or Africa and start life afresh.

The key to lying low is to not be seen – by anybody, and he decides to live off the land. But he also has the presence of mind, to know that people will come looking for him, and attempting to flee, will only draw attention to himself. Instead, he ingeniously constructs a home for himself, burrowed underground. He camouflages the door, with weeds and other undergrowth and if anyone should come to the area hunting him, he can crawl into his ‘hole’, close the door and wait until the pursuers give up or move on.

His scheme works, and for months on end he lives in the wild. As winter closes in, he begins to spend more time indoors and over time he befriends a black wild cat, who he names Asmodeus (after a king of demons), who also makes his home in the burrow.

After all this time, you’d think he’d be in the clear. But not so. Our hero hasn’t been quite as careful as he would like, and soon his trail has been picked up by an expert hunter, named Major Quive-Smith. Quive-Smith is a patient man, and knows that his prey is hiding and living in the area somewhere. He waits…and waits, until our hero makes a mistake and Quive-Smith is able to track him to his lair.

My brief synopsis does not truly do justice to the why and wherefores of the story, and doesn’t even begin to relay the tension in the cat and mouse game that plays out as the hero is chased from Germany into the wilds of Dorset. Rogue Male is a compellingly told tale, and it is Household’s voice as a writer – the teller of the tale – that keeps the story riveting. It’s the type of story that could possibly be told from another angle, and without Household’s voice the main character could come of brutish user of people, who doesn’t have the guts to stand by his own actions. In fact, if you tune back to Permission to Kill on Friday, I’ll be looking at a recent book that features many similar plot elements to Rogue Male, but tells the tale in a very different way.

Household humanises the story, and this is despite the key piece of information – the piece that explains why our hero wanted to kill Hitler – not being revealed late into the story. The bulk of the story is told without our knowing why he did what he did. History now tells us, that Hitler was an evil man, and as such reading the story today, ‘a reason’ is not as important – we just take that as a given. But back in the day, when this story was written, England was not at war with Germany. Sure the threat of war was looming, but not everybody believed that Hitler was a maniac. I am sure he even had his supporters in Britain. So the hero’s motivation was quite significant when the book was originally published, and yet Household was confident enough to hide this nugget away till the end.

I think Rogue Male is an amazing book, and one, which if you are a fan of spy fiction you should obtain and read. You may not end up as enthusiastic about it as me, but I think you’ll agree, it has set the style for a certain type of thriller – a style that is still be used to this day.

Tomorrow on P2K – ‘Rogue Male goes to the movies’.