Books - Review

The one where the strange Mr Honey discovers a fatigue problem in the tail spar of the Reindeer, and they have to prove it, and find the tail of the crashed one in the forests of Labrador.

Very good - excellent story and some aero engineering! And some weird spiritualistic stuff although this didn't annoy me so much this time round.

Jean Paget get shoved around Malaya during WWII by the Japanese, meets Joe, who gets 'crucified' for stealing food for them. After the war they meet up again, eventually, and Jean heads off to kangaroo-land to set up a crocodile shoes factory, ice-cream parlour, and, indeed most of a small town.

Great - really good story!

His autobiography including building the R100, setting up Airspeed, and a bit on writing his novels.

Excellent, some really interesting aeronautical engineering history, shame there wasn't more about his writing, as he only mentions this as a bit of a side issue.

Out of work seaplane pilot Ross applies for a job with an expedition to Greenland, expecting fun and adventure, but discovers he will be organising and flying an academic archaeological survey expedition for Prof. Lockwood and his initially frosty but later lovely daughter Alix. Ross has to do all the work on the trip so he gets very tired and stressed and overdoes things with his sleeping pills. Then one night, as they sleep in their camp, (which the eskimoes have warned them is haunted by ancient spirits) Ross fails to wake up for 36 hours, and instead lives a dream of ancient Norse/Scottish settlers...

Pretty enjoyable, lots of great details on how to operate a seaplane in icy/foggy northern waters in the 1940's, and even the weird mystical dream bit doesn't seem out of place. Read this through in one day, having to stay up to 1.00am to finish it.

In a post nuclear holocaust world the Northern hemisphere has wiped itself out and life only survives in the south. Mainly Australia in fact. A surviving American submarine has pitched up in Melbourne, and, together with an Australian liaison officer, it goes off on a trip to see if anyone is still alive in the north. Meanwhile those still living in Australia have to come to terms with the fact that they will all die in September too - as the winds bring the radiation further and further south.

Not bad, but not enough action really, to compare well with his other novels. Everyone coped rather too well with their impending doom too. Sad though - quite moving.

Keith Stewart lives a quiet life designing and making miniature engineering models and writing about them for a magazine. But his life gets uprooted when his sister and her husband are killed in a yachting accident and he becomes the trustee for his young niece. Aided by engineer-modelling friends who admire his magazine articles he travels the world to try and regain his niece's lost inheritance.

Great, really lovely story. And the heroes are engineers of course. Quiet and unassuming heroes naturally - this is a Nevil Shute novel. Except the American ones, who are loaded and slightly more brash.

A love story set at an RAF bomber command airfield in 1943. Peter flies a Wellington bomber over Germany and Gervase is a WAAF radio operator - they meet after Peter catches a huge pike in the local river and brings it back to the base.

Great story, some excellent flying sequences but also lots of daily life on an airfield at war.

Henry Warren is a wealthy City financier, but his marriage is on the rocks when fate lands him in the hospital of the northern town of Sharples, a town with a proud history of shipbuilding, but now in the grip of depression and recession. Inspired by his kind treatment at the hospital he decides to invest in the town, buys the old shipyards and works hard to create jobs, health and hope for the community. But in raising capital for the new venture he finds he has to risk his reputation and even his freedom, in the interests of his new workforce and their families.

Great story.

A young pilot, Jerry, on coastal patrol duty, sinks a submarine in the Channel but celebrations quickly turn sour when it is dicovered to be a British submarine. Jerry is posted away to another unit and then volunteers to carry out dangerous experimental work, but fate brings him back to the south coast, just in time for his barmaid girlfriend to piece together the evidence that exonerates him from the friendly fire incident, and in fact proves he did sink a German submarine.

Excellent story, and of course, some excellent flying and operational details.

A small group of misfit British officers set out in a converted French fishing boat to wreak as much havoc on the Germans as they can, aided by a rather lethal and nasty flamethrower. Heroism and stoicism abound on the British and French side, while the Germans mostly suffer and die.

Good wartime adventure story.

An old Australian stockman lies dying in an opium and alcohol induced delirium and tells a crazy story of a future where he is an a successful test pilot and flies the royal family around the Commonwealth during a constitutional crisis.

This one has not aged well in some respects, what with the main character being called Nigger, but a great imaginative story although some dubious politics too!

Jessie Proctor, a quiet, conscientious parlour maid is found dead in her room where she worked, on an Australian sheep station. The son of the family, returning from Europe where he was studying and fighting in WW2, tries to work out what it all means. He uncovers a tragic story involving his brother Bill and his fiancee, a wren who met Bill during their service in wartime England.

Good story. Sad but happy.

Jennifer is living a dour life in 1950s England under the austere socialist government. But when her aunt dies and leaves her a legacy specifically to travel to Australia she takes her chance and goes to visit the aunt's rellies who, with wool prices high, have more money than they know what to do with and a great lifestyle. In Oz she also meets a lovely young foreign doctor and helps him carry out a couple of emergency operations. He has dreams of his own, too, and together they explore an old deserted town and plan a new life together.

Great, lovely story, really enjoyed it. Read this while on hols in UK and France.