WRITEALOT: Troy

Tuesday, 7 March 2023

BLACK OUT - Book review

John Lawton’s highly accomplished debut novel was published in 1995, the first of eight detective Troy books. It's a mix of crime in the main plus espionage elements. Sergeant Frederick Troy doesn't like any form of his given name, preferring to be addressed by his surname. He is the younger son of a Russian immigrant father who has become a wealthy newspaper publisher and baronet. Defying class and family expectations, the independently wealthy Troy joins Scotland Yard, becoming an investigator on the ‘murder squad’.

The book begins at the height of the London Blitz, February 1944, when a dog is spotted carrying the severed arm of a man. Before long, Troy is assigned to find out who's murdering German scientists who've been secretly smuggled out of Germany and into Britain. There seems to be a conspiracy of silence regarding the murders and the upper echelons of the American forces. The newly formed OSS is involved, it appears. The convoluted investigation has its compensations for Troy, however, in the erotic form of not one but two femmes fatales – socialite Diana Brock and US Army sergeant Tosca.

The story skips to 1948, when Troy tracks a suspect to Berlin during the Blockade, which provides a fine twist.

Throughout, the characters are well defined and interesting, from the Inspector Onions, to the Polish pathologist Kolakiewicz, the dissolute MI5 man, Pym, the voluptuous Diana and the amusingly voluble and voracious Tosca, to Troy himself. The sense of time and place are expertly evoked.

There is wit and sly humour as well as a little graphic sex. For example, an amusing scene where Troy’s Uncle Nikolai, who works at Imperial College, has a dud bomb stowed in his lab. ‘It fell in Islington churchyard last night. Believe me, it’s as safe as houses.’ That particular metaphor did nothing to reassure Troy. So many houses in Islingon these days were nothing more than rubble and dust’ (p78).

‘Pym was running rapidly to seed and looked as though he meant to enjoy every moment and ounce of it. Somewhere in his attic was a portrait that was forever young’ (p93).

And we have suspense, also: ‘She smiled and took the page from him, and he knew as certain as eggs were powdered that there was someone hiding in the next room’ (p113).

A pleasure to read.

The second Troy book, Old Flames, takes place in 1956 during Khrushchev’s visit to UK. Subsequent books skip about in time, some before the events in Black Out.

Friday, 26 September 2014

FFB - The War at Troy

This book was released (2005) to coincide with the major film release of TROY. Lindsay Clarke’s retelling serves to reveal in eloquent prose the characters behind these tales of two powerful generations of men and women on the cusp of history and myth.

Clarke has used the classics – The Greek Myths by Robert Graves and The Iliad by E V Rieu, among others, to retell these tales in modern prose and has succeeded brilliantly.

The characters – there’s a helpful glossary of deities and mortals at the back of the book – are all drawn well and believably. You feel for them in their happy and tragic moments. Especially the time when King Agamemnon has to sacrifice his daughter to the goddess Artemis. These scenes are particularly moving as the thirteen-year-old meets her father for the first time in nine years. He must kill her to appease the gods, ‘for the good of all.’ How hollow those words ring through history!

As we know, the gods ceased to have form once nobody believed in them anymore. At the time of Troy, men not only believed in their gods, some actually met them.

Unlike the film, which had a limited time-span to tell its story, this book fills in the background to Paris, explaining how he was adopted by a woodcutter and only learned of his true birthright as King Priam’s son from the interfering goddess Aphrodite. From that point on, his life is blighted. More than once afterwards, he wished he’d stayed in the countryside! We can sympathise with him and the other characters, knowing what will happen.

In fact, Helen’s flight with Paris was merely the excuse that Agamemnon needed all along. What comes across here, however, is the honourable and generous nature of Helen’s husband Menelaus – truly, the film did him a disservice! His betrayal by Paris was great indeed.

But the story is more than about the love affair between Helen of Sparta and Paris of Troy. They are merely the cause. It’s about heroism, stubbornness and honour. When King Priam sneaks into the Myrmidons’ camp to claim his son’s body, you feel for the anguish of the old man and even for Achilles. (This was conveyed very well in the film, too).

The war with Troy actually raged for ten years, as prophesised. And it was in under thunderclouds and rain, not only under the blazing sun. Some of the battle scenes are gripping and gruesome and you can almost feel and smell the stink of warfare.

There’s humour, irony, cunning, laughter, betrayal, tragedy and of course cruelty aplenty in these pages. Striding this stage of epic stories about Troy is Odysseus, wise, honest and clever; he was of course the originator of the wooden horse, a fine piece of writing that blends dreams and facts. Yet there are other mortal men who were looked upon as almost gods – Achilles, Ajax and Hector. Their names – and others, such as Cassandra, Penelope, Electra, Orestes and Thetis – echo down the ages. Clarke has managed to bring them alive again for a new readership who might balk at the apparent dry classics.

The sequel, Return from Troy (2006), is about Odysseus.

Book list