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 Amazing action from the king of spies….

Riz and Bang-Bang are back! That’s what the product description screams, and what can I say? It’s been too long! The first Riz book broke new territory as a brand new entry into a genre of books that was becoming–for want of a better word–jaded. James Bond yadayada… Yes, we get it, spy books… Harry Palmer and his glasses… Pass me the boredom box…

Wait! No, give me that book… Blood Honeymoon? I guess it will just be another of those same old spy books. Actually, this is pretty good… No, this is excellent!

Riz broke new ground because it took a new situation and an old concept and melded the two together. What could have been very bad is actually very good.

Now, we come to the latest addition in the cannon and what can I say?

A wedding! Riz and Bang-Bang are getting hitched and nothing can possibly go wrong, can it? As it turns out, someone is emulating the ripper. Oh man, bye-bye Bang-Bang‘s wedding. Now it’s time to get serious.

When people finally get sick of seeing James Bond, Harry Palmer and the other dudes getting it on in the 60s world of the cold war, they will look for a new kind ofspy novel and Riz will be waiting. Charlie Flowers writes with fluency; he writes like a man who feels his characters, and I notice one lady in a review above complaining about the language. Well, frankly, these people do talk like that and they aren’t going to be gentlemen about it. Riz and Bang-Bang fight the bad guys and sometimes “darn it” doesn’t quite hit the mark.

Excellent book from an excellent writer! We need more Riz by Flowers!

Continue reading »]]> Gordon Osmond is an enigma in many ways. He has reinvented himself many, many times over the years, and it is with nothing less than a great pleasure that I write a review for his debut novel Slipping on Stardust. I could of course, be nothing less than compulsively in love with this book. I could sit here and say I didn’t understand it– I did– many will not. Is that a slur on Mr Osmond? Not at all. It is a sad fact that the use of educated English has dropped significantly in recent years. I do not think the dragon and vampire dwelling teenage readers will ever quite understand the kind of writing presented here. What we have here is something resembling a classic.

Now, you may be wondering why I say ‘resembling’? Well, frankly, the word classic has been thrown around so much it has tarnished the very notion of the word. Gordon Osmond writes like a professional writer. He writes with flair and purpose and his characters are almost written for the screen.

Wait!

Let me tell you about the plot before I start boring you with the details. What is the damn book about, right? Well… Imagine a movie star arriving in your neighbourhood. Your quiet, slow and usually comfortably boring neighbourhood. What would happen if he came to star in a local production? How would the town react, even if the star was ageing, over-the-hill, how would he be treated? How would the local amateur actors and actresses take to that? Throw in with care some key ingredients like sexual confusion, scandal, suicide, kidnapping…

You have found yourself with a story to remember.

Gordon Osmond has in many ways written something resembling the Hollywood classics. This isn’t a blockbuster. You will not find Sly Stallone running around in any movie adaptation of this book. It relies on plot and characterisation. In many ways, I was picking out actors for the roles as I learned more about the characters. I could see a part for Burt Lancaster, I could see a part for Dick Haymes, I could see a part for James Mason, I could see so many different nuances of Hollywood in its finest era. If this book had been written back then, it would have been a fine movie. Of that, there’s no doubt.

However, let me return to the point I was making earlier. This book is going to stump many people. Gordon Osmond writes with such eloquency and style- it is true that he writes like Oscar Wilde- but ask the younger generation of book readers who Oscar Wilde is and they will probably admit they have no idea.

Osmond is the King of Hollywood knowledge.

Will Slipping on Stardust be the teenage favourite? Probably not. Does Gordon Osmond care? Probably not. Do I care? Not at all, because this book is full of merit. Do his readers care? Not one jot. This book is bestseller material.

Want to go read something really cool and new and interesting? Yes? Okay, go buy this one guys!

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My latest review is for a book that has recently started to climb again in sales. Night of the Cossack is the first and current published effort by Tom Blubaugh.

When I first opened the Kindle publication of this book I didn’t know what to expect. The idea of writing about pre-revolution Russia came to Tom, apparently when he discovered that his grandfather had been a Cossack. I kept this in mind as I got to the first page of the first chapter.

The book opens with two brothers, Nathan and Israel Hertzfield, startled awake to find that their village is under attack from the Cossacks. The action packed start doesn’t dim… The action keeps rolling and rolling as the story of Nathan unfolds. Blubaugh has written an efficient and fast paced action adventure story for kids of all ages. The characterization is strong and the reader grows to know Nathan as a character. Nathan is a well developed character who always wants to do the right thing. That said, I think the fact that this book is a fictionalized attempt to create a back-story for his grandfather has made him biased towards the character of Nathan. Is that a bad thing? Perhaps, if you want a character who is multicoloured rather than just black and white.

Blubaugh is a creative writer who without doubt has talent, but sometimes one does find oneself wondering how this book could have been better. I think it could have done with more edge, but then this is a book that will be enjoyed by pre-teens who aren’t in love with the trolls and goblins that seem so popular right now.

What does happen to Nathan and Israel? What do the Cossacks do with them? Where do they end up? Why did the Cossacks attack? All these questions and more spring to mind. The book does ask many questions from the first page… You definitely find yourself turning the page to find out the answers, and I think that is one of this book’s strongest points. It is a page turner and you will want to finish it.

I have interviewed Tom Blubaugh twice (click here and here for those) and I find him to be engaging and honest. He is a deep thinker and that comes across in the book, too. Perhaps he hasn’t written with a plan in mind, but subconsciously he has developed the characters and given them purpose. I found all the characters had purpose and all acted quite realistically, without the wooden behaviour some writers use.

I will give Tom great credit for researching his subject thoroughly. The Cossacks are historically close to fact, the Okhrana, the troubles faced by a young Jewish boy living in an anti-semetic country; this book takes on the facts of the Russia we may have forgotten as history has moved on. The character of Nathan is always the Jewish boy trying to escape and Tom almost turns out his heart on some pages with poignancy and suffering. It is clear to me as a reader that this is the story that he has always wanted to write.

I will say that one thing that really frustrated me was the way Tom ended the book. There are few resolutions and the book leaves you with ‘what ifs,’ ‘what could be’ and ‘what happened?’

It was almost as though Nathan Hertzfield just disappeared from my life…

All in all, this is a pretty good romp through the Russia of the Tsars and it will delight many people around the world as it has already. I also think it is a good first attempt and shows signs of what may come from Tom Blubaugh later.