Customer Reviews

Watcher in the Shadows (Firecrest Books)

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This is an amazing work of fiction that is impossible to put down before it is finished. If you have ever visited England in the summer you will appreciate Household's love of the countryside and the intense beauty of it. Household weaves together a story about a man who is forced to confront his past by an unknown stalker, and a beautiful woman who is struggling to find what she wants out of life. Nature, human and otherwise, figure strongly in this amazing story that defies catagorization.

A pity most of Household's books seem to be out of print. The best of them are elegant, thoughtful, and suspenseful, written with an economy that many of today's purveyors of bloated "epics" might well envy. Watcher is probably my favorite of them: concise, immaculately paced, and imbued with a precise and loving sense of place.

Ten years after the War, Charles Dennim lives quietly as a zoologist in rural England. On a quiet morning in May, his trip to the front door to gather the mail is interrupted by a bomb blast. Thus begins the most finely crafted chase novel in my reading experience.

Mr. Dennim's unknown antagonist blames him for the death, in a German concentration camp, of his wife. What the bomber does not know is that Dennim - a Gestapo captain - worked secretly for the Allies to free specific prisoners.

Household's writing in this book reveals his affection for the English countryside in the early '50s, and portrays a protagonist with as fine a sense of moral conduct as any I have ever read.

David Morrell was inspired by Household's books, and after enjoying Rogue Male, I thought I'd give this one a try as well. While it has some great points, it's not as solid or engaging as the earlier work, written twenty years before.

Household is a fine writer (he once described himself as "sort of a bastard by Stevenson out of Conrad), and his narrator gives keen insights on warfare and espionage. This is fitting, due to Household's own WWII experience in British Intelligence.

Throughout the book the narrator is caught in a chess game of sorts with a very worthy opponent, a mysterious figure seeking revenge for a tragedy that occurred during the war, and the last forty-two pages, when they finally engage, are superb.

The problem is in getting there. Once he knows he's the target of an assassin, the narrator, a naturalist, has to take action against someone he can't see. And so there's lots of him thinking, trying to gauge his opponent's moves, which is great at the start, but soon wears old. It's all "he might," "he would," and "he may," without any conflict. And he constantly goes back over the legal ramifications of what he might do, and so on. In short, too much talking about nothing happening.

There's plenty of suspense and uncertainty, and even a couple of startling shocks, but today's readers will find it slow going. There's also just four chapter breaks, which makes each one seem like they go on forever.

Still, there's a lot going for it, as in the mystery of the narrator's part in the war, and a great, understated scene in how he acquires a pistol. There's also some humorous scenes with an Arabian stallion and a romance with a young artist, which at times makes the book read like a cross between James Herriot and Alistair MacLean.

Here's a couple of passages, so you can see how it reads:

He had the quality of an old-fashioned Central European peasant. Any and all rascality was forgivable so long as it made established authority look an ass.

I knew I could never kill him in cold blood. To take revenge for acts of revenge was merely to extend the horror and call it justice.

Horse and man vanished into the trees. That was that. At the cost of some slight loss of blood he had won the interior lines, and my plan of dropping him clean in the open had landed me in the worst possible situation. It was unlikely that I would ever have another chance to use my longer range and greater accuracy unless he was caught on the move by the sudden appearance of the moon.

Geoffrey Household wrote an absolutely amazing story called Rogue Male. Most of his subsequent 'adventure yarns' seem very minor alongside this great book.

Watcher in the Shadows has many good and interesting moments (a tale of hunter and hunted in the English countryside with a nazi death camp survivor chasing down his intended foe - but with a twist)but is probably a mediocre read for most people.

If you enjoyed Rogue Male then give it a try. If you would like to read a 'cosy' Britich thriller then try it - enjoyable but not up to Mr Household's potential brilliance.

If you want to try a Houshold novel other than Rogue Male then I would suggest Dance with the Dwarfs