Customer Reviews

Bluffing Mr. Churchill (Frederick Troy Novels)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have to disagree. That last review is so misleading. Yes this is "Riptide" but it's a US first edition. I know. I read the small print. Prior to this it' s only been available as an expensive British import and it deserves better than a 2 line dismissal. I've no idea why the title changed, but does that matter?
It's a stunning picture of the England just before The US and the Russians entered the war. London is a city under seige, short of everything from food to shoes. That alone is reason enough to buy the book - there've been lots of historical thrillers on this same subject, but this is the best. Beyond that ... what really hooked me was the characterisation. It would have been so easy to have the American GI paired to the London cop read like a cliche and it's about a hundred times better than that. They leap off the page at you, vivid,real and engaging. A five star read.

John Lawton's highly enjoyable Frederick Troy series stands out for several reasons. Troy, the son of a powerful newspaper publisher, doesn't quite fit into the stereotypical English mold. As to be expected, he is literate and articulate, cultured and almost moral, but our Freddie is no James Bond or even Albert Campion. He is merely Freddie, caught between his Russian heritage and the English environment, his education and his own inclinations.

'Bluffing Mr. Churchill' (or `Riptide' in Britain) is set in a wartime London. And Frederick Troy is for most of the novel a minor character. (Lawton, it appears enjoys tweaking the 'rules' of series writing: his Troy novels aren't chronological, Troy we're told at one point resembles James Mason [shudder, so not the alpha hero!], sympathetic characters sometimes fall afoul of the villains, and Troy doesn't always make the best decisions.) And here, the majority of the novel is devoted to other characters.

Briefly, 'Bluffing Mr. Churchill' is the story of Captain Cal Cormack, a bespectacled and seemingly ingenious American soldier and his partner, Chief Inspector Stilton, possibly the most delightful copper the reader will ever encounter. The pair is trying to beat Nazi assassins to Wolfgang Stahl, an American-run German agent who is somewhere in London.

Lawton's 1941 London comes alive. The devastation of the air raids, the pervading grief at the loss of life among both civilians and the military, the disruption of the social order and the undermining of the certainty that life as it has been will continue are carefully juggled with the English ability to find honor and courage and humor in the worst of situations. Lawton's novel is in many ways an entertaining social history rendered with sympathy and humor.

Five Stars. The bottom line: `Bluffing Mr. Churchill' is indeed a well written mystery set in World War II London and should have great appeal for those who enjoy period mysteries, but it is so much more. It is also a striking portrait of London and its people.



Since Lawton's novels sometimes have different titles in Britain and the USA, and since they're not written in a strict chronological order, here are two lists that may help; no promises, but I think I got it right.

Chronological Order (based on Troy's life): A Lily of the Field, Second Violin, Riptide (Bluffing Mr. Churchill), Black Out, Old Flames, Blue Rondo (Flesh Wounds), A Little White Death.

Publishing Order: Black Out, Old Flames, A Little White Death, Bluffing Mr. Churchill, Flesh Wounds, Second Violin, A Lilly of the Field.

I haven't read any of the other Inspector Troy novels; I picked up this one because the jacket's reviews were attractive. I realize now that the review excerpts focused on what I liked about the book (its terrific recreation of a time & place) and were silent on what didn't grab me (the characters & plot).

It's almost worth reading just for the "feel." This is what it must've been like to sit around the kitchen table of a middle-class London policeman in Spring of 1941.

But while the novel is literate and well-written, there's something distancing about it. I found Troy the less interesting and less sharply delineated of the two major characters (Troy and an American soldier, Cal Cormack), and Lawton spends much more time on Cormack. The spy / murder-mystery plot plays out without much momentum; better are the glimpses of the internal politics of the police force and diplomatic services.

I expect I'd like Bluffing Mr. Churchill much more if I already had some investment in the continuing characters. I doubt I'll hunt out the other books in the series.

I began this series out of sequence with "Old Flames", a very clever 1950s spy thriller. This novel picks up Inspector Troy's career at an earlier stage, during WW II, but before the action of "Black Out". Though Troy doesn't get center stage, this is still an excellent story, with its fascinating picture of early 1940s London and the last few months before its two biggest players, the US and USSR, entered the war.

Recommended, in spite of a couple of others here thinking that a prior UK publication is grounds to knock a perfectly good novel.

This book was filled with atmosphere, humor, history and interesting characters. It was the first Insp. Troy novel that I read and John Lawton got me hooked from the get go. The characters are fully developed and different from your usual mystery characters. I am ready for much more from this author.

John Lawton is plainly said , just a damn good writer. His books are instant classics. He takes time to write them. None of them looks or reads alike.
He masterfully switches times in his novels. Lesser writer would get lost in this quagmire, but John Lawton deffinitely not. He thrives and gets better and smarter and more impressive with every book.
It was an immense pleasure to be part of his complex and imperfect world. More, please...

WARNING TO LAWTON FANS. THIS BOOK IS IDENTICAL TO "RIPTIDE."

This is my first read of the "Inspector Troy" series which I gather has many fans.

The time is 1941. An Austrian close to SS factotum Reinhard Heydrich is a spy for the Americans and about to be uncovered. Hurriedly, he fakes his death in an air raid and runs. To where, we don't yet know.

Calvin Cormack, a U.S. Army intelligence officer in Zurich is told to go to London. In London, Cormack, the son of a Congressman who is against American involvement in Europe, is teamed with Walter Stilton, a seemingly plodding Special Branch Inspector.

Stahl, the fugitive Austrian, is in England: so Cormack believes.

The search by Stilton and Cormack begins and the bodies start dropping soon enough. Cormack is drawn into the family life of Stilton and Lawton weaves a plot that beautifully brings in English life, American politics and the family of Freddie Troy. Troy is a homicide detective for Scotland Yard.

Lawton does a nice job of sketching out his characters. Interestingly, Troy plays an almost secondary role, although he is the ultimate hero of the book. The novel does move along nicely, but it is so laden with detail that it does seem to slow down from time to time.

Overall, Lawton does a wonderful job of creating the atmosphere of 1941 London. The characters are all believable, the story more complex on a personal level than most mysteries and the plot doesn't have any disturbing jumps. Overall, a very entertaining read.

Jerry

With one exception, I am reading the Freddie Troy thrillers in chronological order, as opposed to the order in which they have been written/published. This is a very satisfying installment in the series: the story is gripping, the mysteries at its heart are interesting, the characters are engaging--one cares about them--and, as always, the author recreates with a sure touch the way it was in England during the blitz of World War II. Again, the actual historical personages who make appearances are convincing and add to the story. A treat.

A few years ago, a book titled Black Out came to my attention. I read it, and enjoyed it a great deal. It dealt with a young Scotland Yard inspector, Frederick Troy, and his investigation of some murders during the Second World War. It was fascinating. Author Lawton released a sequel a few years later. This third book is an attempt at a prequel, and frankly it's pretty uneven, though some of the characters are interesting, and the atmosphere is wonderful.

Troy is still wet behind the ears, and so he's not the main character. Instead, we have an American army officer, Cal McCormack, and his Special Branch partner, "Stinker" Stilton. They're chasing a German officer who's been spying on the Nazis, and reporting to the American army (in the person of McCormack) for some time. It's the middle of 1941, the Germans are triumphant everywhere, and the spy has apparently arrived in London, but he's in hiding, and no one knows why. When Stilton and McCormack start looking for him, things get dangerous pretty quickly, and soon the bodies begin to pile up.

I can't go into why the plot didn't work for me in this book without telling you too much of it. Suffice to say that the story takes a long while to get going, and events that you would think would be a starting place for the plot take place two thirds the way through the book. Troy begins to figure in the plot seriously later in the story, also.

Some of the characters and plot in the book relate to Lawton's other, later books. One character who appears very briefly at the beginning, and then in the last pages, does things that won't make much sense to people who haven't read his other books, and would give away plot points in one of the other books, if you read this book first--which you'd be inclined to do, considering this is supposed to be a prequel.

As I said in the beginning though, the atmosphere of the story is wonderful, and the characters add to it beautifully. That part of the story is well-done, and if you can just ignore the disjointed plot you'll be OK.