Daren

A short story featuring Garda Detective Bunny McGarry, who can always find his way into, and then out of trouble.

For this short situational story, it is St Patrick's Day in Dublin, which anyone who has been in Dublin for the big day knows means... American marching bands. Along with partner Butch, Bunny finds himself on duty supervising floats (due to a previous indiscretion) and must deal with the fall out of a brawl between one of the American marching bands and a Canadian marching band. But what caused this brawl?

Happy St Patrick's day for yesterday!

3 stars. Very short!

The first two thirds of this book details the expedition that Wyn Sargent undertook with her 12 year old son Jmy (what is this name?) to the interior of Indonesian Borneo, visiting many Dyak villages in 1968. Sargent, a photo-journalist was in Borneo to do a story, but had little intention of visiting the interior. A local journalist who understood the plight of the native villages managed to have the local press run headlines about her impending trip (without her acceptance) and it grew momentum she couldn't resist.

In itself, this journey was a massive undertaking, and dangerous not because of the headhunters but because of the risks to the health of the travellers (hepatitus and malaria were the main risks, but malnutrition was a big factor) and the danger of the environment - be that snakes, floods, or general risk of injury in the jungles and rivers.

What Sargent learned, as well as a massive amount of anthropological information about the life and death of the Dyak peoples was that they were at serious risk of dying out - that the Dyak people were exposed to the same sickness risks as the travellers, they were unable to sustain food cropping, their hunting grounds were becoming more and more barren and as a people they were on a slippery slope to extinction. This is not the expectation for the isolated tribes of the world, who we generally expect are getting on better with out the contact of the great white saviours, but was very much the fact. While not an anthropologist, Sargent does a good job of describing what she saw and what she was told by interpreters and guides.

In the time Sargent spent in the jungles she attended a great many traditional funerals, festivals and general tribal customs, all described in detail. She had a lot of interaction with tribal witch doctors, village chiefs and the day to day people.

The last third of the book describes how, after meeting with the Indonesian government Minister responsible, who basically told her the government couldn't help the Dyak people, set up an American charity to bring medicine, food, hospitals and schools to the jungle. This was a massive undertaking, and Sargent herself was directly approaching company CEOs to solicit donations of goods and services to assist. Sargent was adamant her charity would be non-religious and non-political - so rare and perhaps why this was such a success.

Published in 1974, the two letdowns in the book were the lack of maps and the poor quality photographs - a surprise for a photo journalist!

3.5 stars, rounded down.

A couple of quotes:

P41

"It was six feet long, weighed five pounds and it was stretched across my chest.

'It's a snake,' whispered Jmy.

'Don' move, it's looking around,' Sjam said.

Suddenly the snake bolted and was gone.

Panggul stood looking into the canoe. 'No worry! Snake only little python. Not squeeze much. See in tree? He have many brothers and sisters there.' I looked into that palm tree that sheltered our canoe during the night. It was beset with crawling baby pythons..."

P64

"Flying ants, as large as horseflies, had invaded the area, and he first thick cloud of the swarming insects flew up the river and int the canoes head-on. They stung us with their bodies ad left us scrambling to put our arms over our faces for protection. But Panggul threw out his hands and grabbed as many as he could hold in his fist then smashed them into his mouth! 'Makan, makan,' he yelled. 'Very good for eat.'

The second onslaught of ants sailed into the canoes from starboard. We squinted our eyes against their huge batting wings then clapped them up as fast as we could and shoved the handfuls into our mouths.

If one is hungry, anything is likely to be good to eat, and the flying ants were delicious. Since then, however, I have been able to get along without them."

David Newman seems like that friend who is always in trouble - the stubborn one who refuses to back down, who seldom admits he was wrong, who is always borrowing money and is unable to repay it, and who is genuinely very lucky. Notwithstanding that he is the most interesting friend you have...

But I have got ahead of myself. In the early 1960s Englishman David Newman had an old flatmate who was living and working in Nigeria who invited him to come over some time. Newman phoned him up out of the blue one day to let him know he was coming - by car. He had just bought himself a new Ford Zephyr, and was confident that the trip from London through the Sahara would be possible. In fact at every level of enquiry he was told it was impossible - which became his motivation to succeed.

All his savings spent he begged and borrowed to buy the last of his equipment. He set up another good friend to bankroll him by wiring him money whenever required! He obtained a few visa's but decided primarily to deal with the border complications on the way.

Initially he had a travelling companion (whose own father warned him was worthless, and that he would regret it) but he turned out to be a poor fit and was kicked out after a short time. He also had another companion in northern Africa for a time, but he was mysteriously arrested at a border, and Newman had to proceed alone. However he picked up yet another companion for the final section of his trip, an experienced fellow who was part of a Cambridge University trip by Landrover in a similar route the other direction who was prepared to come out to join him.

For the largest part, stubbornness drove him on. Extreme risks were taken, incredibly recklessly, time and time again he drove off into the desert alone to become stuck in the sand, low on water, out of food etc etc. Incredibly for him it always seemed to work out that someone came along - luckily for the reader, he got to write his book.

reliance on the French Military was high, and often made for uncomfortable reading where he promised to pay, knowing full well he hadn't the funds to do so. He borrowed from his bankrolling friend, he borrowed from British consulates, he paid the Ford Agent for carparts with a cheque he knew was going to bounce.

His route was Britain - France - Spain - Gibraltar - Morocco - Algeria - Mauritania - (perhaps a small diversion into Spanish Sahara (Western Sahara)) - Senegal - The Gambia - Senegal - Mali - Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) - Ghana - Togoland (Togo) - Dahomey (Benin) - Nigeria. It was an interesting time for many of these countries, as they were literally becoming independent from France at the time of travel. This assisted Newman as the newly independent counties were unsure how to manage visa's and border controls, so his lack of visa's didn't trip him up (much).

Anyway, all these reckless acts, his immense good luck and his ability to get outcomes from the least expected sources all made this an excellent and entertaining read. At less than 200 pages it was a quick and enjoyable read about a man prepared to take great risks for the love of travel and adventure.

Predictably by the time Newman arrives in Nigeria his flatmate has departed, and upon being asked what next, he calmly states he will return to the UK to raise some money to finance the return journey Zephyr, by a route through the middle of the Sahara this time. Impossible, everyone tells him...

4.5 stars

Buchan's #4 featuring Richard Hannay - now Sir Richard, and retired from the army to live in the Cotswolds with his wife Mary and young son Peter John. But the idyllic lifestyle is interrupted when he is asked to assist with the rescue of three hostages by a group of men plotting a political and financial upheaval that would rock the world. But who is the ringleader, and what has it to do with a strange little poem given as a clue?

Set mostly in London with a short sojourn to Norway, it is perhaps the darkest of the Hannay stories so far and certainly more complex in structure and reasoning than the earlier novels. As usual with this series, the book was completely contemporary at the time published (1924). The protagonist blends Eastern mysticism and hypnotism with the more straightforward kidnapping, blackmail and profiteering and, as we come to expect with Richard Hannay some frantic chasing as the deadline approaches.

Notwithstanding the frantic section towards the end, there is more sedate chapter than the reader would have found in books 1-3, including several at the start where Hannay is resistant to being drawn into the rescue, and several more when he is at a bit of a standstill on solving the problem and goes through a period of just really treading water waiting for something to happen. However this variable pace was more a pro than a con, as variation in pacing allows the story to build to its climax.

There are some old friends to help him along the way -Sandy Arbuthnot and Archie Roylance feature heavily, and of course Hannay's wife Mary who plays a very involved part of resolving the story

Perhaps the most amusing part was when Buchan, though the Dr Greenslade character sums up the writing of an adventure story - self mocking at its finest:

I want to write a shocker, so I begin by fixing on one or two facts which have no sort of connection… You invent a connection – simple enough if you have any imagination – and you weave all three into a yarn. The reader, who knows nothing about the three at the start, is puzzled and intrigued and, if the story is well arranged, finally satisfied. He is pleased with the ingenuity of the solution, for he doesn’t realise that the author fixed upon the solution first, and then invented a problem to suit it.

I found it as readable and enjoyable as the earlier books.

4 stars.