Customer Reviews

Rogue Male

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The ultimate 'chase' novel. Gripping, absorbing and incredibly realistic. If you ever wanted to know what it would be like to be chased and hunted down like a wounded animal then this is the book you should read. In my opinion it is considerably better than John Buchan's thriller The 39 Steps.

The nameless hero 'Rogue Male' is stripped of all identity and forced to flee from the clutches of Hitler's henchmen.He must leave the civilised world behind if he is to survive. His only ally being his finely-tuned subconscious,primitive instincts.

This book is definitely one of the classics - one which I have re-read at least 6 times and one which I look forward to reading again in the future.

Geoffrey Household's story is so believable that often you are left wondering - did this really happen?

The story is extremely well plotted and, if you are reading this book for the first time,you just can't tell what is going to happen next or how the hero will escape from countless near death experiences...

Some people may find the story a little slow by modern high-octane hollywood standards. For example, the hero is a reserved 'English Gentlemen' and the death count is minimal (but hence much more realistic). Others on the other hand think the 'old fashioned' style is one of the book's strengths.

Basically, if you want something faster paced then try John Buchan or the modern SAS hero Andy McNab. But if you want the daddy of thrillers and one of the most absorbing and intensely rewarding reading experiences of your life then read this near-perfect thriller!

Now!

This is Household's best book. But to truly understand it you have to rewind the decades back to a pre-War England when loyalty, honor, ones word as ones bond, all counted supreme. The protagonist is a Rogue Male, the self-sufficient loner who takes on the world and in this case Hitler and his secret service. It's the 39 Steps, it's Scouting for Boys, and you have to meet it on that level. While Dornford Yates is prissy, Household is visceral. Read the book and then see the Peter O'Toole made for TV movie. The escape from Germany, the tube murder, the flight to Dorset, the eventual showdown between the hero and smooth, smart, accomplished villain, will take your breath away. Read and re-read. Then read the follow-up he wrote 30 years later, Rogue Justice, which is truly a worthy sequel.

Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male is a classic thriller. Household was a British writer, born 1900, who spent some time in the US "just in time for the Depression". He began writing in the US, then returned to England. This is his second novel, published in 1939. He spent the War as an Intelligence Officer in Rumania, then returned to a fairly successful career writing. Rogue Male remains his most famous novel, though Arabesque (made into a movie with Gregory Peck, as I recall) is also well known.

Rogue Male opens with the never named first person protagonist aiming a rifle with a telescopic sight from 550 yards at a certain Head of State. It's never made precisely clear who that is -- a country on one side or the other of Poland, which leaves two pretty evil candidates as of the late 30s. It's pretty likely that Hitler is the real target, but the book takes care never to reveal which of Hitler or Stalin was the target -- on purpose, I think.

The protagonist claims he had no intention of shooting -- he was just "stalking the most dangerous game" for the fun of it, to see if he could be successful. This doesn't play well with the local secret police, who torture him and leave him for dead. But he rather incredibly escapes, and makes his way down a river, soon pursued by his enemies. He stows away on a boat for England, but soon is again pursued. When he is forced to kill one of his pursuers, he becomes wanted for murder by the British police. He flees to the country, planning to literally hole up for the duration. But even his careful plans aren't quite enough -- some bad luck leads to the British police getting a lead, and though he can elude them, the bad guys are able to track him down.

It's pretty good stuff. Exciting, not too ridiculously implausible, and at least somewhat interested in exploring the moral basis of the protagonist's decisions. (Though there is plenty of guff, too, in particular lots of stuff about the wonderful ineffable qualities of the English Upper Class.) (Some of the book is the protagonist's own coming to terms with his real motives and intentions.) It helps of course that the protagonist's target is a real-life maximally evil sort -- even if we continue to disapprove of his assassination attempt, it's hard not to sympathize at some level. The book is also quite dryly funny on occasion. The ending is interesting in retrospect. The protagonist, having again escaped, decides his only recourse is to finish the assassination job. And there the book ends. But it was published in 1939. Then it was a very "open" ending. Now -- any time since 1945 really -- the ending has closed somewhat -- we can only conclude that the protagonist failed in his attempt and was presumable summarily executed. (Though I understand there was eventually a sequel.)

The book set in the early part of this century tells the story of a seasoned famous hunter. The culmination of his hunting passion has a unique nature, the only befitting king of animals - man. But it is not any ordinary man either, it is the most well-protected dictator in the world. But, since Providence has a special hand on the Rogue Male, the hunt is fouled and the hunter becomes the hunted. Now he must think ahead of his enemies to save himself. Through the conflicts of morality and the acts that he is forced to do, emerges a new man. I would heartily recommend this beautifully narrated book to everyone.

G Household's appreciation of the furtive nature of a quarry being hunted on his own ground is worthy of a naturalist. His zen like descriptions of creeping black shadows on a moonless night, the whisping pant of a disturbed badger and the near silent flight of an owl - all the while as deadly man hunted hidden man in a landscape long since built over. An utterly English work and a book to be read many times.

Rogue Male was meant as a thriller. One could put it in the same genre as books by Dan Brown, Michael Crichton, even Elmore Leonard. However, there is one distinguishing feature that separates Rogue Male from the dozens of thrillers filling the aisles of bookstores and that is the quality of writing. None of the above can measure up to RM in terms of language and syntax. The difference in quality is palpable. Basic descriptions and plot devices are figurative. Sandra Stotsky writes about this in her book, Losing Our Language and I am starting to agree with her. Books fifty years ago were better written on average than books today. Books written 100 years ago are an even better deal if one likes quality. Very few present day writers of even serious fiction (I am excluding Cormac McCarthy, J.M. Coetzee and Toni Morrison,) can stand comparison. I am not sure whether many writers write down to their audiences or whether this is what our education system now produces. Rogue Male reminds us that good writing is getting harder and harder to come by.

Like the dictator he attempts to assassinate, the protagonist of "Rogue Male" remains unnamed throughout the novel. For most of the story, all we learn of our narrator-hero, beyond his physical appearance, is that he is upper-middle class, an experienced hunter, and perhaps famous. Beaten, left for dead, and chased down like an animal, his character is a combination of raw survival instinct and cool rationality, without extraneous motivations, attachments, or desires. It is only during the novel's final third or so -- which I read, engrossed, between 1:30 and 3:00 am one morning -- that our hero confronts his motivations, his past, his beliefs, his politics -- and his enemy. Another reviewer wrote that the book's conclusion relies on "somewhat dated notions of loyalty, honor, disgrace, and so forth", but this is not the case: the "dated notions" he refers to are approached reluctantly, from a position of cynicism and disillusionment. To reveal any more would spoil the story, but the discussion of motivation is more complex and fascinating than the other reviewer's comments make out.

The storytelling is pacey and suspenseful, even though the setting is not a tropical rainforest but the lush English countryside, and the protagonist is a tweed-wearing huntsman rather than a John Rambo-style commando. The book is realistic, at least in tone, and the narrator is entertainingly resourceful. Unlike some other survival stories, "Rogue Male" leaves you feeling grateful for civilization.

This is an example of literary genre fiction that is accessible, entertaining, and substantial. It's the kind of book you want to reread and recommend to others. I certainly will be doing both, and I'm glad to have bought it.

Although the book is a little old-fashioned, which makes the it hard-going in places, it's well worth persevering. I particularly liked the dark, paranoid atmosphere and the single-mindedness of the gunman, which meant he was willing to live in a hole in the ground rather than give up. The way the enemies are unseen and the lack of any major characters except the narrator give the book a claustrophobic feel which is really memorable.

I read this book first in the 50's and found it a thrilling yarn. Decades later I saw the xx movie and was relatively pleased but felt that the book must have been better. So I read it again and have read it again twice, the last time going on to read several more books by this author. All of them have the flavor of a skilled man placed in an almost impossible situation and having to live on his wits, with constant improvisation and countering moves by opponents. In the later books the author brings a great appreciation of countryside and the advantages it provides in single-person maneuver.

In this early book, the idea is that a skilled international hunter/author decides to make the ultimate stalk--to maneuver himself into position to get a foreign dictator in his sights. He does so, is caught, beaten, thrown off a cliff, and left to die. Not dying, he begins his attempt to return home, with his pursuers not far behind. The rest of the book involves his experience as a prey animal, hunted by another international hunter who has read his books, and must analyze or anticipate the moves of his pray.

Needless to say, this is my favorite fiction book, its only rivals being non-fiction escape stories, equal in luck and unusual incident. A true classic.

Bored, a professional hunter decides to see if he's capable of assassinating a national leader. He's caught in the process, badly beaten and left for dead. But he survives, and the rest of the book is a cat-and-mouse game with the security forces scouring the globe for him.

This is a humbling book, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's a damn gripping read, great fun on a strictly superficial level. Second, it's loaded with political musings on class and social structure that ring as true today as they did when it was written in 1939. Finally, though, it's humbling because it's a reminder that time just keeps ticking. When it was released, the London Times declared it "Simply the best escape and pursuit story yet written." Yet if I hadn't come on a link to it from a blog, I'd never have heard of it, and I don't think I'm alone.

Which is too bad, because it's a great, thoughtful read.