Jon Morgan is a retired police Superintendent and francophile who, it is said, has consequently seen almost everything awful that people can do to each other. He relishes quality writing in all genres but advises particularly on police procedure for authors including John Harvey and Jon McGregor. Haunts bookshops both new and secondhand and stands with Erasmus: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I may buy food and clothes.”
Kane, a former cop, now Roosevelt’s bodyguard is at the heart of the U.S. political establishment as the news comes in of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. An attack which provokes widespread fear and domestic suspicion.
He is seconded to the nascent Office of Strategic Services (OSS) under Donovan, to move to Los Angeles to get a former forger out of prison and forging one thousand dollar bills. The reason; to bribe Admiral Darlan, the head of the Vichy French navy to come over to the allied side with what is left of the French fleet after the British opened fire on it at Mers el Kébir.
Happy to be in L.A, where his love interest ‘Lou Mahoney’ works as a journalist for the L.A. Times, their relationship having deepened after Mahoney almost cost him his job by reporting ‘pillow talk’ – classified pillow-talk! She does redeem herself by reporting favourably on Eleanor Roosevelt’s efforts to lessen the impact of Pearl Harbour on the U.S Japanese population. Mahony has taken up boxing against other women and is being managed by Cuesta, a local hoodlum, but a vicious and murderous one with talent intelligence and cunning. Cuesta’s obsession with Mahoney leads to her being significantly endangered, and others slaughtered. Kane intervenes, not wholly successfully.
The various plots running together, Kane oversees the forgery operation using a printing operation run by naturalised Japanese. These are not popular people, despite Eleanor Roosevelt’s appeals for tolerance.
The novel ends in North Africa, with Kane working at FDR’s insistence to keep Admiral Darlan, now on the allied side after Operation Torch, safe from anti-Vichy French, and Nazi threats.
The ‘Spoils of War’ series is a loosely connected montage of characters at various times in, and in the run up to, WW2. They range from Spain to Stalingrad and are marked by vivid characterisation and deep historical research. Although fiction, they are utterly believable. Kane, the latest in the series is no exception and the writing is taut and sparse with rarely a word out of place. The writing has shades of the 1930s PI noir.
The various characters on the world stage at this time are finely drawn. FDR, afflicted by polio (as is Kane’s baby sister in the course of the novel) is sympathetically drawn but is driven to save his country as he did by introducing the new deal. Churchill is more of a caricature but an accurate one, nonetheless and Eleanor Roosevelt – often under-estimated – is acknowledged for her impact and abilities at a time of crisis and in a man’s world.
There is implicit comparison with those who occupy the same roles in our times.
This novel, much like its predecessors, is a slow-burner with the fuse lighting the way to the dénouement via some very satisfying twists, turns and diversions. It also sheds light on an America which is no-less divided than today and there are echoes of attitudes and actions which have become familiar to observers of a U.S. under threat – this time not from without, but from internal actors – or perhaps t’was ever thus.
This book was a great read, thoughtful, full of action, humour and reflective about the treatment of minorities in the ‘land of the free’ – then and now. It is a worthy addition to the ‘Spoils of War’ series.
Read RAISING KANE feature by Graham Hurley
