Known Associates

Even more of Manning Coles's Tommy Hambledon books, this is proving a wonderfully entertaining series and I am having a blast with it all - the books are pretty light-hearted, with lots of humour but also plenty of adventure and twists and turns of the plot, and the characters are all vivid and delightful.

The Green Flash
Tommy Hambledon goes undercover in Switzerland trying to find out more about a mysterious Swiss chemist who may have invented a new and exciting form of explosive. Unfortunately, the Nazis also want this Swiss chemist and his explosive, and also the Swiss chemist is not at all who he seems, and within a very few pages Hambledon has been abducted by the Gestapo who believe him to be the Swiss chemist, and is set up with a laboratory in Berlin and ordered to make novel explosives. Excellent undercover hijinks, with Hambledon deciding his best defence against knowing zero chemistry is to be the most bad-tempered, arrogant and annoying scientist ever, while trying to avoid anyone who knew him the last time he was undercover in Berlin in a totally different identity only a few years earlier. Another tremendous undercover adventure with all the frills you can hope for and Hambledon coming up with a superb way to finally extricate himself from the situation. I had a great time with this one.

The Fifth Man
Five British soldiers are taken from POW camps in Germany and persuaded to return to England as spies for the Nazis. Four of them surrender to the British police or are killed as soon as they arrive. The fifth does something very different. I am really liking how Manning & Coles are introducing new sets of characters for their books as well as having continuity with the recurring characters, and the lead character of this book, Anthony Colemore, is fantastic. Colemore was a petty criminal and smuggler who broke out of prison in England, fled to the Continent, decided he wanted to fight Nazis so wound up in the French army just in time for the fall of France, quickly changed identities and uniforms with a dead British officer to get better treatment and promptly ended up in a POW camp where the Germans identified his newly assumed identity as a close relation of a British Fascist and invited him to spy for them. And it only gets more complicated from there, Manning & Coles love playing with false identities for all their characters and wringing every possible trope they can out of them, and it's great. Hambledon is largely in the background for this, running Colemore as an agent but not doing much in the plot, but Colemore is more than strong enough as a character to carry the story, he is the sort of character who should get recruited by Miles Naismith for the Dendarii Mercenaries, he loves taking initiative and showing off how good he is and is endlessly resourceful at making his schemes work. I also shipped him tremendously with another fascinating character, the ingenuous young German officer he escapes with from a British POW camp, who is also not all he seems.

A Brother For Hugh (also titled With Intent to Deceive; also online lists vary about the order the series should go in, but this one is definitely next)
The first post-war adventure, again with new characters. James Hyde has had a very boring life working for his father's business and never going anywhere. But when his father dies, James sells the business and discovers he's a rich man, and starts to think he wants adventure. Meanwhile, Hugh Selkirk looks extremely like James, but while James has barely left Yeovil in his life, Selkirk is dashing and well-travelled British-Argentine businessman with a serious problem: a gang of mafia-style crooks stole some Nazi gold stashed in Argentina, Selkirk stole it from them, and both the gang and the remaining Nazis are hunting him. Selkirk and James meet, James tells Selkirk he wants adventure, and since they resemble each other, Selkirk suggests they have a mini-adventure by swapping identities for a few days. He doesn't mention to James that he's being hunted by both the mafia and also the Nazis. James Hyde settles down in Selkirk's hotel with Selkirk's devastatingly competent manservant Adam looking after him (they are very shippable, and Adam is Not What He Seems) and it's all going well until someone shoots Selkirk and a crook tries to break in through James's hotel window. Another one where Hambledon's role in the plot is largely confined to following around collecting up the assorted gangsters that are being left giftwrapped around the place. Also there's an adorable heavily-implied-to-be-gay couple in this who run a model railway shop together and have a fantastic time aiding and abetting Selkirk and his friends and thwarting the police.

Let The Tiger Die
I have no idea what relationship the title has to the book, but it's a great title. After all the new characters, we're back to Hambledon taking the lead when his Swedish holiday is interrupted by his own urge to run around investigating things that look a little weird. Being Tommy Hambledon, within a chapter he's wanted for murder and been abducted twice in rapid succession and in possession of some mysterious documents, and he doesn't know why. It turns out some communists are trailing around Europe assassinating stray wanted Nazis, and because Hambledon stepped in when he saw an assassination taking place in the street, now the stray wanted Nazis think he's one of them, and the communists want to assassinate him too. This involves a ridiculous and fantastic chase across Europe from Stockholm to Cadiz. Even better, Hambledon decides to call in James Hyde and the gay model railway couple from the previous book to help him with his scheme to avoid the assassins while unravelling the entire fugitive Nazi organisation and its plan to restore the Third Reich all in one go. Tremendous fun and even more identity porn as Hambledon pretends to be himself, the guy just adores his fake identities and they're always fun to watch.

A series of spy adventures written in the 40s and 50s and set from WW1 onwards. I found this series by wandering around the books on Faded Page tagged with WW1, and have been inhaling them this week, the perfect counterbalance to a bad cold and a somewhat stressful half term holiday. 'Manning Coles' is a pseudonym for two people, Adelaide Manning and Cyril Coles, who co-wrote the entire series, and Cyril Coles actually was an undercover agent in Germany during WW1 and based some of the plots on his own experiences; the WW1 story is notably more realistic than any of the others.

Drink To Yesterday, Manning Coles (1940)
The first in the series, and by far the most serious and dark of all the ones I've read. The book has a framing device of the inquest into the mysterious death of an unknown person; we then go back in time to young Michael Kingston's schooldays and his precocious skill at languages with his equally brilliant teacher Mr Hambledon. At the outbreak of war, Mr Hambledon vanishes from the school and young Michael itches to join up and eventually does so under a false name. From there he is then recruited for intelligence work and deployed to Germany as the fake nephew of Hambledon, who is also in the spy business. One of the fascinating things about this book is that the narration, which is mostly from Michael's POV, uses whatever name he's currently going by as his name in the narration; how spies have to adopt specific identities and completely subsume themselves in them is one of the recurring themes of the book. Anyway, while undercover they collect information of various sorts and Michael gets recruited by the head of German intelligence in the area (a war-wounded aristocrat with 'flashing dark eyes' who likes to take young Michael out for dinner and sardonic conversation) and sent back to England, and rapidly discovers that life as a spy is terrifying and morally complicated and involves killing innocent people or destroying their lives. He and Hambledon have a wonderful mentor-friendship-slashy dynamic, there are adventures galore and the whole story is a very good read, though with a rather dark and unhappy ending.

Toast To Tomorrow (also titled Pray Silence, 1940)
I think this one has been my favourite so far. While Tommy Hambledon was Presumed Dead at the end of the previous book, given that the whole series is about him, it's not much of a spoiler to say no, he is not dead. In fact he is in Germany, suffering from amnesia. While amnesiac he concludes that he was a good German soldier during the war, he makes friends with a wide range of people which unfortunately include Hitler, and rises to become quite powerful in the growing Nazi party right up to when he gets his memory back. The authors just throw everything at the amnesia tropefic aspect of this, it's great; in general they love to lean in to all the spy tropes and situations and dramas. Hambledon then sets about trying to make contact with London and sending them intelligence without getting himself killed by the Nazis. Tons of exciting adventures of Hambledon living undercover and trying to figure out how to make the best of his unexpected situation, with unexpected allies and enemies and all sorts of spy shenanigans and a fascinating depiction of Germany just before WW2 got started.

They Tell No Tales (1941)
Back in England in 1938, Hambledon and his faithful comrade acquired in the previous book settle down to live together near Portsmouth and are given a young and somewhat feckless agent to help them investigate why naval ships keep mysteriously blowing up. This one has a large and complicated cast and is closer to a murder mystery than a spy novel, though it's very good fun as that, with all sorts of shenanigans and near-misses and a ruthless German spy ring and Hambledon trying to teach his young agent some survival skills as he sends him out to tackle the problem. The story has disguises and mysterious shootings and red herrings and all the trimmings of a classic spy/crime drama and I had a blast with this one too.

Without Lawful Authority (1943)
This introduces two new main characters, Warnford and Marden. Warnford was a military engineer working on new designs for tanks who was cashiered after his designs mysteriously found their way into the enemy's hands; Marden is the gentleman burglar Warnford caught trying to rob his safe. In the classic Golden Age style they like each other instantly and team up to set about trying to clear Warnford's name and catch the spy who really did steal the tank designs. In the process of this they stumble across an amazing number of other spies, whom they capture, tie them up and leave with a note for Hambledon to tidy up, so then Hambledon is trying to figure out which rogue agents are catching German spies for him. It's a great romp of a plot, though somewhat marred by the ending which involves a showdown in a lunatic asylum which - well, it's period-typical, but not in a good way. But all the same it was a fun light read and Warnford and Marden are great.

And I am looking forward to reading more of these, I believe Hambledon returns undercover to Germany in the next one which should be excellent.