Hubble Image: The Eagle Has Risen

This spectacular image of a stellar spire in the Eagle Nebula was taken by Hubble.  Its beauty is stunning; the flagrant use of color, shadow and light creates an image that is more question than answer.  It lingers on the screen in a splatter of uneasy form.  It speaks to the wonder that is the universe, and somehow, it brings a connection of both time and distance.  It relates both near and far, the universe and humanity in a mosaic of pixels.  It is real and unreal at once.  It truly is beauty.

The NASA website states the following:

“Appearing like a winged fairy-tale creature poised on a pedestal, this object is actually a billowing tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula. The soaring tower is 9.5 light-years or about 57 trillion miles high, about twice the distance from our Sun to the next nearest star.

“Stars in the Eagle Nebula are born in clouds of cold hydrogen gas that reside in chaotic neighborhoods, where energy from young stars sculpts fantasy-like landscapes in the gas. The tower may be a giant incubator for those newborn stars. A torrent of ultraviolet light from a band of massive, hot, young stars [off the top of the image] is eroding the pillar.”

For the rest of the story click here.
 

THE KEYS OF HELL by Jack Higgins

This is the fourth part of an essay about the six novels Jack Higgins wrote featuring Paul Chavasse titled "Paul Chavasse: An Introduction to the Cold War Spy Story".  The novels were written throughout the 1960s, and owe much to both the James Bond and Matt Helm novels.  The novels were published as by Martin Fallon, and before you read this post, you should read the first two segments of the essay here and here and here to put this post in context.

The Keys of Hell was published in the U. K. by Abelard-Schumann in 1965, while it made its U. S. debut as a Fawcett Gold Medal paperback (1-3673-6) in the 1970s.  It appeared in the United States after The Eagle Has Landed made Patterson a bestseller, with an attractive cover painting by Gordon Johnson.  It was reissued, in similar fashion to Year of the Tiger, by Berkley as a paperback in 2001.  The Berkley edition included two additional chapters; one at the opening and one at the end.  This time Chavasse is in 1995 Manhattan, and is presented with a case study of his exploits in 1965 Albania.  The inclusion of the introductory chapter is more successful in Keys, and it includes a humorous piece of dialogue, which explains both Patterson’s writing style and Paul Chavasse perfectly—

“‘This man is what?  Half English, half French.  He speaks more languages than you’ve had hot dinners.  University degrees coming out of his ears.  In spite of all that, a killer by nature.’” 

Keys was my introduction to Paul Chavasse and I have a soft spot for it.  It opens in Milan, Italy—Chavasse has freshly returned from an assignment in Albania, where he was reconnoitering the anticommunist underground, which is more or less defunct, since the sigurmi has swept it up.  After he briefs The Chief he is given an assignment to take care of a double agent, and then he is ordered to take a three week holiday.  A few days into his vacation Chavasse is lured, without sanction from The Bureau, back to Albania to recover the Black Madonna, a religious icon a Catholic group attempted to smuggle out of the country, and the communist Albanian government wants destroyed. 

Chavasse garners the help of an Italian smuggler named Guilio Orsini to make a quick run into the marshy delta of the Buene River in Northern Albania, where a small launch reportedly carrying the Madonna was sunk by the Albanian Navy.  They plan a quick in and out trip, but when they arrive the Albanian’s are waiting.  Chavasse is quickly alone—his party all captured—on the sparsely populated Albanian coast.  It doesn’t take him long to find a few friendly natives, and a way into the ancient castle his friends are being held.  It also doesn’t take long for him to end up in one of the cells, and it takes Chavasse’s patented mixture of violence and wit to find his way out again.

Keys is one of the shorter Paul Chavasse novels—it runs well shy of 50,000 words—but it is one of the more illuminating regarding the character of Paul Chavasse.  He is portrayed as something close to an antihero.  He has always been a man of extreme violence, but his violence has seemingly been manifested in his struggle against tyranny.  However, in a single line of dialogue, Chavasse turns his motives from a soldier of democracy to something very close to a thug—

“‘If I’d been born in Germany twenty years earlier, I’d probably have ended up in the Gestapo.’”

This development of Chavasse as something short of a heroic character is a significant development in both Paul Chavasse as a character and Harry Patterson as a writer.  Patterson has always had a tendency to create protagonists that fall far short of their perceived station in life—an educated gentleman who chooses violence over a refined life—but they are rarely simple thugs who enjoy violence for violence.  This separation of Chavasse as a run of the mill protagonist is a mile post in Patterson’s development as a writer.  This treatment of Paul Chavasse as a violent semi-thug is a marked difference from the Paul Chavasse portrayed in The Testament of Caspar Schultz. 

The revised edition of Keys is the first novel to introduce Chavasse as “Sir Paul Chavasse.”  It introduces his birth date, Paris, 1928, his education:  Sorbonne, Cambridge, and Harvard.  He is identified as a Third Secretary of The Bureau, and Smirnoff is his favorite vodka.    

Free for Nook and Kindle

Tyrus Books is offering the classic Robert Ward novel Red Baker free for both Nook and Kindle.  Today, July 14, 2012, is the final day.  It includes an introduction by Daniel Woodrell, and it received a starred review from Booklist.  The description at B&N reads:  

“When Red Baker, a Larmel steel worker in Baltimore, Maryland, gets laid off from his job he goes crazy: boozing, attempted philandering, running away from his future. Filled with unforgettable characters from Red’s angry but loyal wife, Wanda; his basketball-star son, Ace; his lifelong friend Dog, a casualty of the layoff; and Crystal, the go-go dancer at Lily’s bar who embodies Red’s fantasies of escape. Red Baker is a classic American novel about a man with no identity who tries to replace the one he’s lost.

“Set in the world of the hard-working men of the steel mills, this acclaimed work tells the story of an unemployed steelworker who drinks, nearly loses his wife, and decides to come back fighting.”

The Nook edition is here and the Kindle edition is here.

YEAR OF THE TIGER by Jack Higgins

Signet Edition

This is the third part of an essay about the six novels Jack Higgins wrote featuring Paul Chavasse titled "Paul Chavasse: An Introduction to the Cold War Spy Story".  The novels were written throughout the 1960s, and owe much to both the James Bond and Matt Helm novels.  The novels were published as by Martin Fallon, and before you read this post, you should read the first two segments of the essay here and here to put this post in context.

Year of the Tiger made its debut in 1963.  It was published by Abelard-Schumann in the U. K., but to my knowledge it is the only novel featuring Paul Chavasse, which was never published in the United States in its original form.  It was released in 1996 by Berkley as a paperback in an updated version—Patterson added chapters, one at the beginning and one at the end, which featured Chavasse as The Bureau Chief in 1995 London and presented the story as a reminisce. 

While I haven’t seen the original edition, the style of the writing and the plotline indicate it unlikely other significant changes were made.  It has a far flung plot that features a new type of energy for space travel, a rescue mission to Tibet, Chinese communists and an alluring Tibetan woman. 

Chavasse, after his participation in the safe passage of the Dalai Lama from Tibet in 1959, is assigned to infiltrate Tibet and escort a British missionary named Dr Karl Hoffner safely out of the country.  Dr Hoffner has developed a mathematical theory, which would allow for “space to be twisted…until it becomes an energy field.”  While the Chinese are unaware of Hoffner’s recent success with his decades old theory, the British Government is alerted by one of Hoffner’s oldest friends, and it wants him, and his theory, back in the West. 

Berkley Edition

Harper Edition

The story moves quickly from London to Tibet; Chavasse is smuggled across the Indian border and assumes the identity of a Soviet journalist writing a story about Hoffner.  The game turns sour, however, and Chavasse finds himself in the local Chinese garrison’s stockade—a predicament he is often in throughout the series.  It takes Chavasse’s usual mixture of wit and muscle, and a little help from friendly locals, to get out of the jam.  Then he is forced to collect Hoffner, with the game blown, and smuggle him across the high mountains of Tibet, with a platoon of Chinese Army regulars on his trail, to freedom.

Year of the Tiger is probably the weakest of the Paul Chavasse novels, but it still has the same presence and entertainment value as the others in the series.  Not to mention it has all the hallmarks of early Jack Higgins—it is quick, spirited, heavy with a stark and meaningful atmosphere, and really, really fun.

THE TESTAMENT OF CASPAR SCHULTZ by Jack Higgins

Fawcett Gold Medal

This is the second part of an essay about the six novels Jack Higgins wrote featuring Paul Chavasse titled "Paul Chavasse: An Introduction to the Cold War Spy Story".  The novels were written throughout the 1960s, and owe much to both the James Bond and Matt Helm novels.  The novels were published as by Martin Fallon, and before you read this post, you should read the first segment of the essay here to put this post in context.

 

The first, and one of the better to feature Paul Chavasse, was originally titled The Testament of Caspar Schultz.  It was published in the U. K. as a hardcover with a limited print run by Abelard-Schuman in 1962, and made its U. S. debut—in a strikingly brilliant silver cover—as a Fawcett Gold Medal paperback (13963-8).  It features a straight forward plot.  A high ranking Nazi named Caspar Schultz has written his memoirs.  It is reputed to be an expose of German and British power brokers sympathetic to the fascist regime, including the man who was to act as the Reich’s Quisling after the successful German invasion of England.  

Schultz’s aide is shopping the manuscript to publishers, and makes the mistake of enquiring a German publisher with fascist sympathies.  The Nazi underground is quickly on his trail, with the goal of destroying both Schultz and the manuscript.  The Bureau is brought into the chase when a British publisher is approached to publish the manuscript and Chavasse is enlisted to meet Schultz’s aide and arrange to acquire the manuscript.

Harper Collins

It is a seemingly simple job, but Chavasse is ambushed on the train he is to meet the aide, and he spends the rest of the story trying to catch up with events.  On the way he meets two Israeli spies tracking Schultz as a war criminal, a bevy of heavies from the underground Nazi movement, an unexpected romance—the only he is to enjoy over the entire series—a friendly German Secret Service agent, and a surprising betrayal. 

Testament is the most personal of the Chavasse novels.  It shows Chavasse as something approaching a cynical romantic.  While in Germany he meets an Israeli agent, Anna Hartmann, and he is immediately smitten.  The two make plans to leave the game, but as nothing happens as it should, Paul Chavasse ends the novel in the same place it opened—alone.        

Berkley

Testament was republished as The Bormann Testament in 2006.  The only noticeable change is the Nazi leader morphs from Caspar Schultz to Martin Bormann, which is explained in a brief Foreword as the original title, but due to perceived legal implications it was changed from the real life Martin Bormann to the fictional Caspar Schultz.  The assertion that Schultz was originally intended to be Bormann is supported by an early passage that describes Bormann’s failed attempt to escape Berlin in a tank.  Bormann was never conclusively found after the war; however, it is widely believed he committed suicide outside a railway station on May 2, 1945.

Free for Nook and Kindle

Prologue Books is offering a free eBook version of Gil Brewer's The Brat.  It is free through today.

"She looked at the rotting, sun-blasted shack, the one room where they all lived, slept, made love, died. Looked at the dusty lawn where no grass grew. At the steaming swamp, at her tobacco-spitting mother. Saw the sly, lustful eyes of her father’s friends. Then she looked at her own lush beauty.
Get me out of here, she prayed. Oh, please get me out of here! I’ll pay any price."

The Nook version is here and the Kindle is here.