To the Devil a Daughter

I wanted to give this 3.5 stars, because it ain't really worth 4. But it deserves better than 3, so I chose to round up. Honestly, you can't go past Dennis Wheatley for guilty pleasure. He's the granddaddy of page turners, the master of foot-to-the-floor action. Sure he wears his ultra-conservative politics on his sleeve, and his attitudes to women (they need protecting), “Gips” (heads like cannon balls, those Arab types) and left wing governments (“It will be years before the incredible muddle they made can be unsorted.”) are the stuff of nightmares for the politically correct, but you've got to loosen up and just enjoy the ride. Excuse the risible dialogue, because some of the prose is actually quite good. Three cheers for Johnny, an insufferable Mummy's boy who proves himself a solid bit of good old-fashioned English manhood by the end of the book. Another three for Mumsie, who has her own inimitable and completely unapologetic way of dealing with rotten Satanists. This book has more faults than the shaky earthquake zone I live on top of, but I loved it.