Pit two unstoppable conmen against each other, throw in a truckload of dollars, add enough political paranoia to send all America looking under its beds for Reds, cue in the CIA, the KGB, MI6 and the Mafia, all dressed to kill, and you have "Red Rag Blues". This is the USA, 1953. One conman is senator Joe McCarthy, high priest of America's holy war on Red treachery. The other conman is Luis Cabrillo. Once he made a fortune as a freelance in counter-intelligence. Now he's flat broke. The two men embrace each other like clams. Luis sells Joe a steady stream of bogus Commie treachery. Both men prosper. But Luis's dodgy past is catching up with him...Also meet: Julie Conroy, Luis's girlfriend, a corker of a New Yorker; Soviet spy Kim Philby, recently tipped to head MI6; and young Bobby Kennedy, who really did serve and admire Joe McCarthy in 1953. "Red Rag Blues" is a black comedy inspired by the true state of America as the McCarthy witch-hunt reached its climax of ranting and raving, when it was nothing to laugh about.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
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"* 'Robinson is the most underated and shamefully neglected living novelist.' Tibor Fischer * 'Robinson should be mentioned in the same breath as Ballard or Heller.' Express"
About the Author
Derek Robinson is best known for his two trilogies of novels about fighter pilots. Considered classics of war literature, they including the Booker Prize-shortlisted Goshawk Squadron. Red Rag Blues completes a trilogy about Cabrillo's career, which began with the Eldorado Network and continued in Artillery of Lies.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Cold War Theatre,
By R. Sundquist (Madison, Wisconsin) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Red Rag Blues (Hardcover)
Luis Cabrillo first appeared in THE ELDORADO NETWORK, a brisk thriller in which he double-crosses the German intelligence service in the Second World War by selling them precisely the information they want to hear while ostensibly spying on the British. He returned in ARTILLERY OF LIES, a darker novel that saw him continuing his misinformation campaign from England through to the end of the war. RED RAG BLUES picks up his story in 1953: he comes to America, broke, to find his sometimes-girlfriend Julie Conroy, who has been blacklisted. From there he figures out several schemes to make money -- by doing pretty much the only thing he knows how to do.
Derek Robinson is a terrifically funny writer, and his view of Fifties America is blackly hilarious. The FBI, CIA, KGB, MI6, the Mafia, Hollywood, and Joe McCarthy himself all get the farcical treatment they deserve. Luis takes them all on -- not because he has any political motive, but because he realizes that he can figure out what each of them wants, and then provide it to them at a significant cost. McCarthy needs names of Communists in America, so Luis consults a list of 19th century pioneers, writes down the names, and tells Tail-Gunner Joe that they're the real names of Soviet agents in the State Department, or the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or what have you. The only people who get hurt are the muckrakers themselves. Luis, despite all his brilliance, is in over his head as usual. Help comes from some unexpected places. The mood is lighter than Robinson's usual form, but deftly satirical throughout, and the popular mindset of America gets skewered ruthlessly on every page. This is the kind of Cold War thriller we need to see more often. Those years were ridiculous, and should lend themselves easily to satire, parody, and farce. Robinson has already demolished WWII spies, as well as the Royal Air Force in six books; RED RAG BLUES is a natural step forward.
4.0 out of 5 stars
I'd love to review this book...,
By
This review is from: Red Rag Blues (Hardcover)
... but I'd have to read it first. Why isn't there an affordable copy available in the U.S. It's a very frustrating situation for the many American fans of Derek Robinson. I'm giving it 4 stars because all of DR's titles are 4+ stars. He is an outstanding military novelist - funny, bitter, brutal and human.
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