• Book Reviews
  • Slideshow Reviews
  • About Silash
  • Lessons from Fiction
  • Twitter Pics
  • Contact
  • Join Mailing List
Silash Ruparell

Anthony Price - Other Paths to Glory (1975)

5/1/2015

0 Comments

 
My one liner: The trenches of the First World War were horrific killing fields. Why would the French Secret Service be interested in their topography six decades on ? Other Paths to Glory is both a spy novel and a reminder of 20th Century European military heritage.

Other Paths to Glory won the Gold Dagger award of the CWA for its author Anthony Price.  Dr David Audley is the hero of this, and other novels, by Price.

Paul Mitchell is a historian and expert on the French and Belgian battlefields of the  First World War.  He spends much of his time in the archive rooms of the British Commonwealth Institute for Military Studies. 

Researching.

His mentor and hero is Professor Emerson, for whom Mitchell worked as a researcher at Cambridge.   One day Mitchell is interrupted in the archive rooms by two men, and his life changes:

“Number Two spoke this time.  And whereas Number One was a huge, rumpled, soft spoken, Oxbridge type, Number Two had “soldier” written all over him, from his carefully cropped red hair, and the mirror-shine of his boots, to the bark of his voice.”

Searching questions to Paul Mitchell about a small torn piece of German trench map produced by the two men.  That night, Mitchell, who lives with his mother, is brutally attacked and thrown into the canal near his house.  He manages to somehow clamber out, and make it back home, to the astonishment of the police constable, who have found his “suicide note.”  And Professor Emerson has died that day.  In a house fire.  Except it wasn’t the fire that killed him.

Dr David Audley (British Secret Service) arrives at Mitchell’s house, and persuades him to go into hiding.  Assumed identity...etc.

But Mitchell is also persuaded (seduced ??) into going further than that.  If he is to maximise his chances of survival he must help Audley find out what he and Emerson “knew” that has resulted in one murder and one attempted murder.

This book is somewhat of a trip down memory lane for me.  The school-trip that made the biggest impression on me as a teenager was a four-day tour of the battlefields of The Somme and Flanders, the main sites of the First World War trenches where millions of British, Commonwealth and German troops were killed.
Picture
The Canadian War Memorial at Vimy, France
“ “Terrible – yes, it was that sure enough,” he nodded.  Only terrible wasn’t the half of it: if there was a word in the English language for the loss of fifty-seven thousand men in a few hours that first day he hadn’t been able to find it.”

Paul Mitchell has now become Captain Paul Lefèvre (pronounced “Lefever” – English Huguenot, you see) of the 15th Royal Tank Regiment.  Accompanying Audley to find out what is was that had so intrigued and excited Professor Emerson on a recent visit that he had made.  The problem is that every time they find a war veteran, or local, who has something useful to say, he drops dead.

Spy novels, when well-written have the air of imparting “inside” knowledge of the machinations of global geopolitics and secret services, as if they are facts.  This one is no different.  Whether it is indeed true or not, we are told of how “neutral houses” work:

“...That’s the curse of open diplomacy – one side’s got to be seen to win or lose, and if neither does then it’s just as bad.  So the first thing that they came up with was the hot line...Except that when its a matter of life and death nothing beats face-to-face talking...So then they set up the neutral houses...if two countries have a problem they just approach a third party for a key to a neutral house.  No publicity, no TV, no questions asked, permanent top security guaranteed at head-of-state level.  France is a popular country for meeting...”

We find out that the French Secret Service has called its British counterparts to help out because a “neutral house” meeting is about to take place at a farmhouse in the Somme.  And there has been some murderous activity in the area lately.  So they are worried.

One of Paul Mitchell’s specialities is the Hindenburg Line.  In particular he has done much research into the feats of a British Regiment called the Poachers.  Recognised as one of the most incredible feats of the Battle of the Somme was the manner in which the Poachers captured a ridge where there was a Prussian Redoubt, which borders onto “Bully Wood”, or Bois de Bouillet.  The objective had been to attack a village called Hameau which was near Bully Wood.  The Prussian Redoubt was considered impregnable, built as it was into the side of a chateau.  The story of how the Poachers captured it was one of both bravery and foolishness.

But maybe also interesting to someone trying, several decades on, to penetrate an even safer and more impregnable fortress on the border of Bully Wood.

The plot is clever, but the battlefield descriptions and the recounted tales of the veteran characters make this novel as much a work of military history as of fiction.

There is no Wikipedia entry for this book.  The Google Books link is here.
0 Comments

    RSS Feed

    Silash Ruparell

    Reviews of books that I read in my spare time.  Enjoy.

    Archives

    November 2015
     - Ferdinand von Schirach: Crime & Guilt (2012) 

    October 2015
    - Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi: The Systems View of Life - A Unifying Vision (2014)

    September 2015
     - Danny King: School for Scumbags (2012)

    August 2015 
    - Erich Maria Remarque: Arch of Triumph (1945)

    July 2015
     - W. Somerset Maugham - The Painted Veil

    June 2015
     - John Julius Norwich: Byzantium, The Early Centuries (1988)

    May 2015
     - Anthony Price: Other Paths to Glory (1975)

    April 2015
    - Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley: The Emotional Life of Your Brain (2012)

    February 2015
    - Charles Neider (Ed): The Autobiography of Mark Twain

    January 2015
    - Paul Torday: The Girl on the Landing (2009)

    November 2014
    - David Eagleman: Sum - Forty Tales of the Afterlife (2009)

    August 2014
    - Simon Winchester: Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China (2008)

    May 2014
    - Steven Strange & Jack Zupko (Eds): Stoicism - Traditions and Tranformations (2004)

    March 2014
      - Michael Dibdin: Vendetta (1990)

    January 2014
     - Matt Sinclair (Ed): The Fall - Tales from the Apocalypse (2012)

    September 2013
     - Edward Jay Epstein: Have you ever tried to sell a Diamond ? (And other
    investigations of the diamond trade) (2011)


    August 2013
     - Lessons from Fiction Part 3: The role of institutions in alleviating the poverty trap 

    April 2013
    - Emile Zola: L’Assommoir (The Drinking Den) 1877, Translation by Robin Buss (2004)

    March 2013
    - Margaret Atwood:Oryx & Crake  (2003)

    February 2013
     - Paul Auster: Sunset Park (2010)

    January 2013
     - Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea (1951)

    December 2012
     - Lessons from Fiction Part 2 - How Societies adapt to Disruptive Change

    November 2012
     - James Barr: A Line in the Sand (2011). And a nod to "Information is Beautiful"

    October 2012
     - Voltaire (1749 translation): Zadig or the Book of Fate (1747)

    September 2012
     - Leigh Skene: The Impoverishment of Nations (2009)

    August 2012
     - Steven Roger Fischer: A History of Language (1999)

    July 2012
     - John Dickson Carr: He Who Whispers (1946)

    June 2012
     - Matthew May: The Shibumi Strategy (2011)
     - Trevanian: Shibumi (1979)

    May 2012
     - Lessons from Fiction: Part 1 - A beginner's guide to convicting an innocent man

    April 2012
     - H. Woody Brock: American Gridlock (Why the Right and Left are Both Wrong, Commonsense 101 Solutions for the Economic Crises) (2012)
    March 2012
      - Jane Jensen: Dante's Equation (2003)
    February 2012
    - Amartya Sen: The Idea of Justice (2009)
    January 2012
    - Ian Morris: Why the West Rules...For Now (2010)

    Categories

    All
    Actus Reus
    Adam Smith
    Afterlife
    Alcohol
    Amartya Sen
    American Literature
    Anthony Price
    Apocalypse
    Attila The Hun
    Aurelio Zen
    Autobiography
    Babylonia
    Balfour Declaration
    Basque Country
    Brad Pitt
    Brain
    Buddhism
    Byzantine Empire
    Calouste Gulbenkian
    Carl Gustav Jung
    Cartel
    Charlemagne
    Charles Darwin
    China
    Cholera
    Cicero
    Constantine The Great
    Constantinople
    Criminal Law
    Cuba
    Dalai Lama
    Danny King
    David Eagleman
    David Lloyd-George
    David Mccandless
    De Beers
    Decimation
    Descartes
    Destiny
    Detective
    Dialogue Of The Deaf
    Diamonds
    Donation Of Constantine
    Dr David Audley
    Dr Gideon Fell
    Economics
    Ecosystems
    Edward J Epstein
    Emile Zola
    Energy
    Epictetus
    Erich Maria Remarque
    Ernest Hemingway
    Fat Boy
    Fate
    Ferdinand Von Schirach
    Fiction
    Financial Crisis
    Fiscal Deficit
    Fishing
    Flanders
    Fractal Mathematics
    François-Marie Arouet
    Franz Bopp
    Freeman Dyson
    French Literature
    Fritjoft Capra
    Gafin Principle
    Gaia Theory
    Game Of Go
    Genomics
    Geo Politics
    Geo-politics
    German Literature
    Giallo
    Great Wyrley
    Happiness
    Havana
    Healthcare
    Herbert Henry Asquith
    Hindenburg Line
    History
    Holistics
    Huckleberry Finn
    Huguenot
    Humility
    H. Woody Brock
    Ian Morris
    Identity
    Infographics
    Information Is Beautiful
    International Relations
    International Space Station
    Investment
    Iraq
    Isaac Newton
    Israel
    Jack Zupko
    James Barr
    Jane Jensen
    Japan
    Japanese Aesthetics
    Jean De La Bruyère
    Joe Dimaggio
    John Dickson Carr
    John Julius Norwich
    John Maynard Keynes
    John Rawls
    Joseph Needham
    Julian Barnes
    Julian The Apostate
    Justice
    Kabbalah
    Karl Marx
    Kenneth Arrow
    King Feisal 1st
    Language
    Lawrence Becker
    Lebanon
    Leigh Skene
    Leverage
    Life Outcomes
    Linguistics
    Locked Room Mystery
    London
    Margaret Atwood
    Mark Twain
    Martha Nussbaum
    Martial Arts
    Matthew May
    Matt Sinclair
    Max Brooks
    Meditation
    Mens Rea
    Mesopotamia
    Michael Arditti
    Michael Dibdin
    Middle East
    Migration
    Miscarriage Of Justice
    Moliere
    Mordecai Kurz
    Mother Company
    Mr Five Percent
    Murder
    National Patrimony
    Natural Resources
    Neuroscience
    New York
    Non Fiction
    Non-Fiction
    Oil And Energy
    Oprah Winfrey
    Palestine
    Parcae
    Paris
    Parsi
    Paul Auster
    Paul Torday
    Percy Bysshe Shelley
    Persia
    Philippines
    Philosophy
    Pia De' Tolomei
    Pier Luigi Luisi
    Plato
    Pont De L'Alma
    Population
    Poverty
    Proto Indo-European
    Psychology
    Purgatorio
    Qalys
    Quantitative Easing
    Quantum Mechanics
    Recession
    Religion
    Richard Davidson
    Richard Easterlin
    Rodney William Whittaker
    Roman Empire
    Sanskrit
    Sardegna
    Satellites
    Science
    Science Fiction
    Sharon Begley
    Shibumi
    Short Stories
    Silash Ruparell
    Simon Winchester
    Sin
    Snooker; Pool; & Billiards
    Social Realisation
    Sociology
    Socrates
    Spy Novel
    Steven Roger Fischer
    Steven Strange
    Stoicism
    Supernatural
    Sykes-Picot Agreement
    Syria
    Systems View
    Terrorism
    The Somme
    Thomas Malthus
    Thriller
    Trevanian
    Vampires
    Voltaire
    Water
    What Can We Learn From Fiction
    Winston Churchill
    World War I
    World War II
    W. Somerset Maugham
    Yin And Yang
    Zionism
    Zombie Banks
    Zombies

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.