I had never read any of Gavin Lyall's novels before this one and knew nothing about him. As I read this excellent novel, I wondered if he had actually been in the fledgling Secret Service before the First World War. After finishing the book, I looked him up on t'Internet....
Gavin Lyall wasn't born until 1932 and died in 2003, only a few years after writing Honourable Intentions, but he captured pre-WWI England and France beautifully in this adventure. I genuinely felt he must have been there from the way he describes a Secret Service so new that its staff bought their own furniture for the office.
It's 1913. An Englishman is accused of setting fire to a French police station and the French authorities have applied for extradition. Unfortunately, if that is successful, the young man has threatened to announce that he is the illegitimate son of King George V, who is making a royal visit to France the following week. For reasons that passed me by, the embarassment that such an announcement will cause is likely to threaten the fabric of society and strike at the heart of the UK's peaceful existence. The Secret Service must - somehow - prevent the announcement being made. There's murder, shoot-outs, attempts to find the boy's mother and many other events that carry the plot along to a satisfying conclusion.
I was a little surprised that the book wasn't written in the first person, given that Captain Ranklin is on almost every page. However, the third person narrative allows us to follow a couple of other characters when they split off from Rankin. It came as a shock when one of them died.
This is a cracking book, written by a man who was only fourteen when WWII ended, yet initially fooled me into thinking he was around before WWI. Although it is the fourth novel (and turned out to be the last) in Lyall's Honour series, it was satisfactorily standalone. I'll look for the others in the series but I really don't think it matters if I had never read any of Gavin Lyall's novels before this one and knew nothing about him. As I read this excellent novel, I wondered if he had actually been in the fledgling Secret Service. After finishing the book, I looked him up on t'Internet....
Gavin Lyall wasn't born until 1932 and died in 2003, only a few years after writing Honourable Intentions, but he captured pre-WW1 England and France beautifully in this adventure. I genuinely felt he must have been there from the way he describes a Secret Service so new that its staff bought their own furniture for the office.
It's 1913. An Englishman is accused of setting fire to a French police station and the French authorities have applied for extradition. Unfortunately, if that is successful, the young man has threatened to announce that he is the illegitimate son of King George V, who is making a royal visit to France the following week. For reasons that passed me by, the embarassment that such an announcement will cause is likely to threaten the fabric of society and strike at the heart of the UK's peaceful existence. The Secret Service must - somehow - prevent the announcement being made. There's murder, shoot-outs, attempts to find the boy's mother and many other events that carry the plot along to a satisfying conclusion.
I was a little surprised that the book wasn't written in the first person, given that Captain Ranklin is on almost every page. However, the third person narrative allows us to follow a couple of other characters when they split off from Rankin. It came as a shock when one of them died.
This is a cracking book. Although it if the fourth novel (and turned out to be the last) in Lyall's Honour series, it was satisfactorily standalone. I'll look for the others in the series but I really don't think it matters if they get read in a random order.
#HonourableIntentions #NetGalley
