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All I will admit to is watching SMTV Live, due to a Cat Deeley crush.

Dark Danger
Malcolm Saville 1965 (Girls Gone By 2018)



This is the third of Saville's Marston Baines thrillers for older teenagers. Baines was seemingly the author's fictional avatar being not only a middle aged secret service operative but also a thriller writer. An undergraduate nephew and his friends provide the supposedly relateable elemnts in the cast of characters. Saville was a christian and had a conservative outlook and he brought those views to bear in the themes of the novels. The previous novel The Purple Valley was concerned with the corrupting effects of recreational drugs while this one deals with the even more pernicious practice of satanism. Both novels are a bit feeble if I'm honest which is a shame as I wanted to like them. Hopefully they'll pick up as I've already got the final four on the shelf.

The Double Helix
James Watson 1968, Gunther S. Stent (ed) 1980 (Norton 1980)



"The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA is an autobiographical account of the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA written by James D. Watson and published in 1968. It has earned both critical and public praise, along with continuing controversy about credit for the Nobel award and attitudes towards female scientists at the time of the discovery.
The intimate first-person memoir about scientific discovery was unusual for its time. The book has been hailed for its highly personal view of scientific work, though has been criticised as caring only about the glory of priority and the author is claimed to be willing to appropriate data from others surreptitiously in order to obtain it. It has also been criticized as being disagreeably sexist towards Rosalind Franklin, another participant in the discovery, who was deceased by the time Watson's book was written" (from wikipedia)

Watson's memoir takes up less than half of this edition with the rest being reviews, commentary and the original reseach papers published in 1953. It's a good read and the reviews and Gunther Stent's comments are a valuable contribution. On a personal level, although I studied genetics and worked in the field this was the first time I really thought about the structure of DNA and appreciated just how beautiful it is, on a visual aesthetic level and through how it's function as a replicator and a code is immediately apparent from that structure.

Breakfast of Champions
Kurt Vonnegut 1973 (Grafton 1986)



"Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday is a 1973 novel by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. His seventh novel, it is set predominantly in the fictional town of Midland City, Ohio, and focuses on two characters: Dwayne Hoover, a Midland resident, Pontiac dealer and affluent figure in the city, and Kilgore Trout, a widely published but mostly unknown science fiction author. Breakfast of Champions deals with themes of free will, suicide, and race relations, among others. The novel is full of drawings by the author, substituting descriptive language with depictions requiring no translation.
Breakfast of Champions makes heavy use of metafiction, with Vonnegut appearing as the narrator/creator of the work, explaining why and how he makes this world as it is, changing things when and as he sees fit, and even being surprised by events." (from wikipedia)

I read Vonnegut's first six novels in my teens and early twenties and liked them a lot and in particular Cat's Cradle, Mother Night and Slaughterhouse 5. I never got round to the rest of them until a few appeared on the Asda charity stall including this one.
It's typical Vonnegut with absurd characters and situations, satire, black humour. I found it funny but not as substantial as the earlier classics. Vonnegut struggled to write it during a period of depression and didn't rate it too highly himself and after the best selling success of Slaughterhouse 5 it was a realative failure. The 1999 film had a stellar cast with Bruce Willis, Albert Finney and Nick Nolte but it was given such a kicking by preview audiences and critics that it never went on general release.

Rex Milligan Holds Forth
Anthony Buckeridge 1957 (Armada 1973)



"Rex Milligan's writing a book about Sheldrake Grammar and it's crammed full of incident. As, for example, the time Jigger's bull terrier, Ikey, gets into class. Old Birkie's sure he can handle it, but it's more a case of Ikey taking care of him! And when the Secondary Tech. capture their flag, it's up to Milligan to retrieve it. But how can he get past the boys guarding the gate? He has a plan that depends on split-second timing - timing that runs amok. Even the school play gets unexpected publicity when a monkey's given a walk-on part! Milligan's desription of school life is certainly colourful - the manuscript must never fall into a master's hands!" (publisher's blurb)

The third Milligan book, like the first two, just doesn't have the spark of magic that animates the Jennings series. Decent copies of the remaining two titles are pretty expensive so I might call it a day and stick to the tales of Linbury Court from now on.

First Ypres 1914
David Lomas 1999 (Osprey 1999)



"In the autumn of 1914 the professional BEF fought its last battle, aided by French troops under Foch, against a heavily reinforced German drive for the channel ports. Although the Germans failed to break through, the death knell had rung for the "Old Contemtibles" as they were virtually wiped out in this brave defence. The names of the towns of La Bassee, Armentieres, Messines and Ypres first became known in this campaign and their echoes would be heard for the next four years" (publisher's blurb)

Another good entry in the Osprey Campaign series concluding the battles of 1914. I noticed that even though there are nearly four hundred of this series none of them cover any of the other European theaters in WWI other than Gallipoli. Not a sausage on the war in Prussia, Galicia, Serbia, Italy, Salonika, the Caucusus. The series is ongoing so hopefully we might see additions on significant battles such as Tannenberg or Caporetto in the future.

Destroying Angel
Richard Paaul Russo 1992 (Ace 1992)



"In the crumbling San Francisco of tomorrow, a former narcotics-squad cop is reluctantly drawn into the investigation of a serial killer's return. Louis Tanner recognizes the ugly work of the Chain Killer, a maniac who dispatches his victims two at a time, welding the corpses together in a grotesque embrace and dumping them into a body of water. Tanner's troubled conscience from a previous case compels him to reunite with his former colleague, Frank Carlucci. Together, they enter the city's notorious red-light district, chasing a vicious drug dealer who forces them even deeper into the underworld — where police are powerless and the foulest criminals live in contempt of the law." (from Barnes&Noble)

I liked this book more than I expected. It's set in a cyberpunkish future but without much in the way of cyber in the usual sense. Future noir might be a better label. The protagonist doesn't really come to life and his motivations are unconvincing but the semi-dystopian San Francisco is well drawn and the plot rattles along at a decent pace. It's the first in a series of three and I would be prepared to have a stab at the others.
Nominated for the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel.

Huon of the Horn
Andre Norton 1951 (Ace 1963)



"Huon, Duke of Bordeaux, never suspected that the evil Earl Amaury was busily plotting his downfall. So the young duke fell easily into Amaury's trap - tricked into slaying the Emperor Charlemagne's only son. The Earl fed Charlemagne's wrath with lies, and the bewildered Huon found himself exiled from France. His only chance for redemption lay in the completion of four impossible tasks in the land of the deadly Saracens - a quest doomed to failure. Huon now faced danger that would still the heart of the stoutest knight. First he had to win the aid of Oberon, King of the Elves. Only then could he hope to survive the dark peril of Babylon to take the greatest prize of all - beautiful Claramonde, daughter to the Emir!" (from Biblio)

Listed on ISFD as Andre Norton's third genre work and first novel. It's actually a retelling or translation of "Huon of Burdeuxe" published in Tudor England which was itself a translation of a 13th century French poem. Shakespeare probably read it or saw a play that was produced in London in 1593 and pinched the character of Oberon, King of the Faeries for A Midsummer Night's Dream. Medieval Romance, Chivalry, fantastic monsters, battles and bloodshed, all packed into 130 pages. Just go with the flow and enjoy.

Coronel and Falklands 1914
Michael McNally 2012 (Osprey print on demand 2022)



"The first encounter in World War I between the Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy ended in a decisive victoryfor the Germans at the battle of Coronel, when Admiral von Spee's crack East Asia squadron destroyed the British 4th Cruiser Squadron off the coast of Chile. It was the first defeat suffered by the Royal Navy for over 100 years. Desperate for revenge, the british Admiralty dispatched some of their most modern ships, the battlecruisers Inflexible and Invincible, to eliminate the German threat and restore British pride. The two sides met near the Falkland Islands where the German squadron was routed. This new study details the course of these two battles that left control of the high seas in the hands of the Royal Navy." (publisher's blurb)

The last of the Osprey Campaign books covering 1914 (hopefully some on the Eastern fronts to come). The Gallipoli book is next on the list, the only one in the series on WWI in 1915.

Geordie at the Club
Dick Irwin & Scott Dobson 1970 (Frank Graham 1970)



The jazz club? The yacht club? The bridge club? No this is the working mens club. Every village had one, even small towns had several and they owned their own brewery: Federation Ales, which was a big operation. The lads turn a humorous eye on this once thriving Northumbrian subculture of beat groups, bingo and strippers, but mostly beer - huge volumes of it.
I think there's a book about the history of the Federation Brewery which I'll have to have a look out for.
Geordie Beuk No.6