vivdunstan

Still reading steadily through the series. These books are just perfect for decompression reading, they're mostly lightweight though with the odd flash of seriousness, they're full of fun hijinks and adventures, all the characters are very nicely drawn and overall they're just plain fun to read. Plus a nice sprinkling of historical interest for the period.

Among Those Absent
Prisoners are escaping and disappearing with tremendous success. Tommy Hambledon has to find out why. While Biggles would have tackled this by looking for rogue airplanes, Hambledon tackles this by getting himself a cover as a fraudster and being sent to prison, whereupon he muscles in on someone else's escape and gets rescued from prison. By hot air balloon and parachute. And after Hambledon and a fellow escapee have a wonderful hot air balloon and parachute ride, they then have to deal with the fact that the escape gang want paying for their rescue out of the totally fictional ill-gotten gains Hambledon is supposed to have stashed somewhere. In the process of dealing with this, Hambledon encounters a different slightly shady group of guys who--well, their leader lives in a truly flamboyantly ridiculous suburban mansion which is named, and I really could not believe my eyes when I read this, Kuminboys. It is almost redundant to add that he has all sorts of miscellaneous young men calling on him at all hours who are willing to do all sorts of shady odd jobs for him. He deals with blackmailers unofficially. Manning and Coles never say anyone is gay or refer to sexuality in any way, but then they do things like this and I love it. And, well, there is a plot involving Hambledon sorting out the prison break gang, but I'm afraid my brain seized up at Kuminboys and I can't actually remember what happened otherwise. The anti-blackmail gang was fine at the end and so was Tommy, and that's the main thing.

Not Negotiable
This one opens with a prologue explaining that the Nazis had an industrial-scale programme forging currency from the various Allied countries in an effort to destabilise their economies. Now, after the war, large numbers of dubious notes are turning up across France and Belgium and Tommy Hambledon is trying to find the source. A fun Belgian detective teams up with him for this, and lots of Manning & Coles's usual vivid secondary characters including a reformed crook and a young man who tries crime and doesn't like it, plus two young women who attack a gangster with a frying pan with considerable success. Not one of the most outstanding, but plenty of fun to read.

Diamonds To Amsterdam
This was an absolute classic, featuring a mad scientist, so many people in disguise, gold and jewels and a seaplane and a Very Significant Umbrella and kidnappings and escapes and really everything you could possibly want. The story opens with our mad scientist being found murdered. The mad scientist in question had just solved, allegedly, the problem of how to turn silver into gold, and then someone bludgeoned him over the head and his notes all disappeared. Then his assistant disappeared, then his machinery was stolen, and Tommy Hambledon is traipsing around a Home Counties village trying to find clues to all of this and figure out what was going on, with occasional trips to Amsterdam thrown in for good measure. A great ride, plus some excellent whump as various characters are drugged or kidnapped and imprisoned, lots of fun all around.

Dangerous By Nature
Tommy Hambledon visits Central America. While this had some moments of period-typical racism, it was not as bad as I expected. The story was a familiar one from multiple Biggles and a Gimlet on this theme: in a fictional Central American state, a slightly lost British sailor saw a ship secretly unloading goods in a remote part of the country while hiding its identification. Hambledon is sent to investigate. He is told that he can liaise with the excellent American spy Mr Hobkirk who is already there; however no such person ever comes up. Instead he has a peculiarly devoted and helpful local man named Matteo who follows him around everywhere, produces useful information and kills assassins and generally devotes himself to Hambledon's wellbeing and work, far more than you would expect from the guy who you paid to carry your luggage to the hotel. Hambledon, unusually for him, has no suspicions about the identity of the capable and knowledgeable Matteo. Anyway, the country is run by your standard thriller dictator who has annoyed the local aristocracy and is fleecing the local peasantry and has plans to flee the country with all the wealth he can carry away, soon. Hambledon discovers that the mysterious cargo was of course weapons, supplied by the Russians; however the Russians are somewhat inexplicably arming both the President and also the old aristos who oppose him, and having bought everyone off with guns, they are busy building something involving lots of concrete in the middle of the jungle. Hambledon investigates, nearly gets killed many times over in the classic way, discovers he does not like jungles at all, and eventually figures out what it's all about. (spoilers for the plot)

It's atom bombs. The Russians are building a missile site so they can launch atom bombs at the Panama Canal. This book was written in 1950 and it's clear that Manning and Coles don't know that much about atom bombs at this point, because apparently there are twelve atomic warheads on site. This site gets shelled by the aristocrats, and the atom bombs are all set off by accident. Hambledon, hiding down the valley with his friends a few miles away, is fine. Radiation and fallout are not a concern for anyone. It's fascinating seeing that while everyone is scared of atom bombs, they are not nearly scared enough, they're treated as being functionally the same as super-sized regular bombs and there is no mention of any further ill effects. Hambledon arranges that the story is put out that a previously unknown volcano erupted and that was what the big mushroom cloud was all about (the mushroom cloud, evidently, they have heard of). And once all the atom bombs have detonated, the whole story is over.

Now Or Never
Hambledon has heard rumours of a secret resurgent Nazi society in occupied Cologne and heads out to investigate. Forgan and Campbell, our gay model train shop and lawbreaking-for-fun guys, come along to help out, impersonating the Spanish financiers who are supposed to be meeting the Nazis in Cologne - a job that does not become easier when the actual Spaniards show up. Meanwhile, Hambledon makes friends with an earnest and enthusiastic German private detective, and tries to figure out what's going on. Excellent atmospheric descriptions of bombed-out Cologne and life there as things start to recover postwar. These are all very much immediate postwar books, and it's fascinating to see what the attitudes are and the snippets of different settings, in France and the Netherlands and Germany and England, every character has a war backstory of some sort and most of the plots are about leftovers of war one way and another.

Alias Uncle Hugo
A Ruritanian adventure of a familiar mould for Biggles readers. Tommy Hambledon is undercover in Soviet-occupied Ruritania to retrieve the teenage king of Ruritania, who is living incognito with his elderly tutor to care for him, and take him to England. Presumably to head up a government-in-exile or possibly to go to school, Manning and Coles wisely leave the politics to look after themselves and concentrate on the fun bits, ie Hambledon undercover as a Soviet inspector of factories trying to find an opportunity to extract young Kaspar from his Very Communist School For Little Communists. Unlike Biggles, Hambledon has no compunction at all about leaving a trail of bodies behind him and does cheerfully shoot people in the head the minute they suspect him. He also has a great line in making friend with people and then dropping them in the shit, in this case several senior communist police officers who think he's the bee's knees right up until they get killed or arrested for their connection with him. There's some excellent Aeroplane Content in this one too, Hambledon doesn't team up with Biggles but his life might have been a bit easier if he had, and being sent to make a stealth landing in Ukraine to retrieve the Ruritanian Prince and the British spy who's rescued him is exactly the sort of job Biggles does all the time. But Hambledon has to figure out his own aeroplane evacuation, and there's plenty of aeroplane fun as he does so.