Biggles Buries a Hatchet, by W. E. Johns

[rachelmanija]

"Suffering Icarus!"

Biggles learns that his old enemy/crush, the German spy Erich von Stalhein, is being held in a gulag on a wretched little island because he refused to kill Biggles! Biggles agrees to rescue him on the condition that no post-rescue conditions be put on von Stalhein. It would be mean and unfair, Biggles explains, to rescue him only on the condition that he provide British intelligence with information.

At this point (post-war) Biggles is living with Algy, Ginger, and someone named Bertie, whose intro book I apparently missed and so am assuming is Wooster. Honestly, he acts exactly like Bertie Wooster if he was a fighter pilot.

The prison island is very vividly awful. The briefing mentioned that large crabs are dried and ground to flour to make a kind of bread and it only goes downhill from there. Biggles & friends meet up with a Russian with a very well-justified grudge, who plots to kill the camp commander with an axe – not because he’s just that angry, but because all he has is an axe.

The rescue of von Stalhein is very clever and suspenseful, and he and Biggles have some good moments together.

This is one of the darker books in the series, mostly because of the well-evoked setting and the vivid depiction of ordinary people driven to despair. They can rescue von Stalhein and one other prisoner, but the larger situation is out of their hands.

Have a Biggles/von Stalhein h/c fic in which they find the one cozy spot on the entire island.

Comments

[el_staplador]

I think Bertie's surname is Lacey. Or was that Algy? Also he might be a Lord. My brother used to get a graphic novel adaptation called Biggles in the Battle of Britain out of the library, and Bertie looked very much like Bertie Wooster. However, it also showed Algy as ginger and Ginger as blond, so not to be relied upon.

[sholio]

It's Lissie! (Regrettably I can immediately answer this.) Lacey is Algy.

[davidgillon]

Dim memory* suggests he's actually the Honourable Bertie (so son of a baron or viscount, or younger son of an earl).

* I don't think I've read a Biggles book with Bertie in it since my early teens, so dim is as good as it gets at this point.

[sholio]

They definitely refer to him as Lord Lissie in canon, although I haven't read enough of the books he's in to know if this is entirely consistent from book to book.

[philomytha]

Bertie is Lord Lissie. Algy is the Honourable Algernon Montgomery Lacey.

[ethelmay]

Lissie and Lacey were two pretty men...

[davidgillon]

Aha! Right title, wrong character :)

It was very obvious, even as a child when I first read them, that Ginger was the odd man out in terms of the class setup, with three very upper class characters and then one with a characteristically working-class name (Hebblethwaite). IIRC he even started as a Sergeant-Pilot, not even an officer.

[sartorias]

I read that one. The pacing is terrific! Recco some others?

[rachelmanija]

Definitely don't miss Biggles Flies East (terrific plotting) and Biggles & Co (really fun cat-and-mouse in the air and in a castle.)

[sartorias]

Oh, good. I know I got at least one of those from the site you linked.

[larryhammer]

he acts exactly like Bertie Wooster if he was a fighter pilot

I ...

I ... don't think I'm getting any more work done today, not until I manage to banish that concept from my conscious brain. That -- I -- this -- what? -- it --

[graydon]

You must be familiar with the conceit that Bertie is a shell-shock case?

Bertie Wooster is vapid but has always been physically competent. Presuming someone managed to get the minimal book-learning into him, he'd make an exceptional fighter pilot; nothing involved is anything he's afraid of, and reflexive responses are just what is wanted. Thinking is a barrier to success.

[taelle]

I once read a crossover fic with Bertie and Lord Peter Wimsey based on this idea, where everyone around Bertie just avoided mentioning the War because it awoke old trauma (the author also said that for a vapid person Bertie knew just too many quotes).

[graydon]

"too many quotes" is an entirely just observation.

I have run into at least two such fics; one has Bertie being Peter's former commanding officer (and having a moment of clarity); one has Bertie being sedated for the two minutes of silence. The later pretty much got the tone, which I think of as a large accomplishment.

[osprey_archer]

Everything I hear about this book makes me want to read it more, even the bread made of dried crabs.

Honestly, he acts exactly like Bertie Wooster if he was a fighter pilot.

The image of Bertie Wooster as a fighter pilot is giving me life and possibly also existential terror. Not sure he should be trusted with an aircraft!

[rachelmanija]

I agree with graydon. I think it would actually play to his strengths.

[osprey_archer]

His navigator is sure that Bertie is going to get them killed when Bertie refers to various pieces of equipment as "whatchamacallits," but he soon realizes that beneath the daft mannerisms lies a true flying ace.

Even if Bertie does sometimes yell "What ho!" as he chases a German aircraft.

[rachelmanija]

Would read. In fact I feel confident that someone just like that actually existed.

[philomytha]

I'm fairly sure he does actually yell things like 'Tally ho! Yoicks! Gone away!' when fighting German aircraft in the books... my personal favourite Bertie-ism is 'well, chase Aunt Sally round the gasworks!' :-D

[davidgillon]

"Tally ho" would certainly be period RAF terminology - it's originally a hunting term meaning the fox is in sight.

(The Luftwaffe used "Horrido", which is pretty much identical in origin, or "Pauke Pauke")

[scioscribe]

For some reason I cannot get over the shirt on that cover. And the backdrop looks so tropical, compared to the frozen hellhole of the prison camp!

After all the darkness in this one, you really need that ending where von Stalhein doesn't go back to being Biggles's enemy/frenemy: it's a much-needed bit of consolation and moral victory after a lot of realistic bleakness. (With reviving bits of Biggles/EvS shipping along the way, of course.)

[rachelmanija]

I admit, I chose the cover for its hilarity value.

[sholio]

This book was such fun, if somewhat dark, as you pointed out. But it definitely supplied all the prison escape that was promised, with extra bonus von Stalhein! I love how Johns is the very definition of leaning into his premise. If the book promises to be about a prison escape, you can be confident you're going to get a well developed prison escape and not half a chapter.

[rachelmanija]

Yes, I really appreciate that.

Love the icon.

[sholio]

I couldn't keep posting about these without an airplane icon.

I feel like the "leaning into the premise" aspect is one of the strengths of the Boys' Own Adventure thing the books have going on. It's sort of like telling a story to a kid: if you promise them a secret island base or a prison escape, you had better follow through and not go rambling off into something that's going to inevitably seem boring by comparison.

Ever since the original conversation about it, I've used it as a troubleshooting tactic with my books. If I feel like the plot is getting a bit stuck, I ask myself, "Okay, if you told someone about the premise of this book, what are the things they would look forward to most about it?" and then shovel in as much of that as possible.

[philomytha]

My copy has that cover! It is not even close to the most ridiculous Biggles book cover, either. Also it leads you to suppose there will be far more in the way of horses than the book actually contains.

I adore Biggles's mental gyrations at the start of the book. Veering from 'no way, of course I won't go rescue him, it's all his fault he's in prison for not doing what I told him in the first place' via 'but let's just find out everything we can about where he's being held, just out of pure academic curiosity of course' and then ending up at 'yes of course I'll go but not if you want him to give us anything in return, this has to be totally unconditional or you'd better find someone else to do it'. I have to suppose that Raymond realises Biggles is about an inch away from going anyway when he sanctions it. And nobody's more surprised about all this than von Stalhein himself, who spends the entire escape going 'but I need to talk to you about this! what do you want from me in return?' until Biggles finally sits him down and tells him he rescued him because he loves him, um, has sympathy and affection for him.

And Fritz. Fritz is such a sweetheart. I love him.

Bertie first shows up partway through WW2 in a book called Spitfire Parade, which unfortunately is very bad. I was so interested in it because I thought it was going to be Biggles in the Battle of Britain, and it is, sort of, but apart from the first couple of chapters introducing Bertie and some other characters, it's a collection of Johns's WW1 short stories with a find-replace job done on the plane types and characters to make them into WW2 stories. I'm not sure if this ever actually ends up with a Spitfire being described as an open-cockpit biplane, but it wouldn't surprise me. Anyway, Bertie then turns into one of the four core characters for the rest of the series.

[minoanmiss]

I jsut spent a much more pleasant break than usual, thanks to you. *wink*

[sholio]

Also it leads you to suppose there will be far more in the way of horses than the book actually contains.

Oh, hmmm, an excellent point, I hadn't even noticed there's a horse on there! (There are mounted Cossacks, I guess ...?)

I adore Biggles's mental gyrations at the start of the book. Veering from 'no way, of course I won't go rescue him, it's all his fault he's in prison for not doing what I told him in the first place' via 'but let's just find out everything we can about where he's being held, just out of pure academic curiosity of course' and then ending up at 'yes of course I'll go but not if you want him to give us anything in return, this has to be totally unconditional or you'd better find someone else to do it'.

Yessss. I initially wanted a lot more of Biggles immediately racing off to the rescue rather than spending weeks thinking about it and then more or less going on orders. But on rereading, I've realized how much of his decision was an obvious foregone conclusion and he just needed a little time to talk himself into it, and in fact, once his supervisor gives him a pretext for it, he just immediately lops that pretext off at the knees by removing all plausibly deniable excuses and then he's off. :D

A somewhat random, very minor thing that I really love about this book is von Stalhein looking around with open curiosity when he finally gets to see their headquarters for the first time. One of the things I like most about him - which Biggles constantly remarks on, so obviously it's not just me XD - is his intelligence and quick-wittedness, and there's just something genuinely adorable about how openly intrigued he is by getting this peek behind the curtain, a look backstage at a part of his former arch-enemy's life that he's never been able to witness before.

I was also very curious about Bertie's introduction and I'm now kind of disappointed that it was so, well, disappointing! (I do really like Bertie. I was unsure about him for half a book or so, and then completely won over.)

[philomytha]

When I first saw the cover I thought we might get von Stalhein on a horse again! That'll have to wait for fanfic, I guess :-)

What I love is that Algy blatantly realises that Biggles is going to go, long before Biggles realises it himself. Also the way Biggles backs off in his first conversation with Fritz - he starts off with 'so were there any OTHER reasons you came to see me other than to tell me this message? anything you wanted to ask me to do? anything at all?' and when Fritz finally takes the hint, Biggles suddenly seems to realise this might be complicated and backs off again.

I was also very curious about Bertie's introduction and I'm now kind of disappointed that it was so, well, disappointing! (I do really like Bertie. I was unsure about him for half a book or so, and then completely won over.)

The chapter in which Bertie arrives is great! He has a hunting horn, a misbehaving terrier, and seems utterly bonkers, and then we get to see him in the cockpit. Also he dances a foxtrot with Algy at some point. It's the rest of the book that's a disappointment. Biggles Fails to Return is a really good early Bertie book, that's probably what I'd point someone at to introduce Bertie properly. It's a great book too, a WW2 adventure (but no von Stalhein) opening with Biggles presumed dead. Loads and loads of h/c and daring undercover missions with all the trimmings, and also features our heroes flying planes in their underwear.

[rachelmanija]

SOLD.

[scioscribe]

Second the SOLD reaction to this description of Biggles Fails to Return.

[sholio]

THIRDING. And also planning to read Bertie's introduction chapter, because that sounds delightful.

I am also 100% in favor of EvS on a horse; I can't believe we only got that in one book. This is immediately going on my fanfic wish list.

[cyphomandra]

Ooh Fails to Return is the only Biggles book I own, and I haven’t read it - I have an elderly hardcover lurking somewhere.

I have in fact read almost no Biggles (some Worralls though) but am now halfway through Learns to Fly thanks to your reviews.

[rachelmanija]

Excellent.

[rachelmanija]

I just read it, and it's delightful.

[minoanmiss]

That's just romantic. BWEE.

[sovay]

Honestly, he acts exactly like Bertie Wooster if he was a fighter pilot.

That in itself is a wonderful image.

[sabotabby]

Holy shit this sounds incredible.

[autopope]

You know what the world is crying out for?

A very slashy Biggles/von Stalheim frenemies-to-maybe-lovers space opera with a plot revolving around smugglers, pirate planets, space dogfights, and cute tribble-like alien fluffballs. Call it Biggles in Space or maybe Biggles and the Planet of Adventure, and for world building use the generic Traveler TTRPG with the serial numbers filed off (heavily based in Poul Anderson's future history, pre-Imperium: absolutely all tramp steamers and free traders, not a whiff of modern multimodal container freight logistics and shipping).

Yes, I know Biggles is probably trademarked and Johns' work is still in copyright, but still.

[rachelmanija]

I would read the hell out of that.

[autopope]

My extensive twitter polling yesterday suggests that gay Biggles is not enough: it needs to be transbian Biggles, accompanied by disaster gay Algy and trans furry Ginger as an anthropomorphic vixen (not a furry, an actual humanoid fox).

I am not sure I'm up to this challenge (and I have scheduled paying work to write first) but it could be fun.

[davidgillon]

Pretty certain I read this one as a kid, though the cover isn't ringing any bells. OTOH I'd absolutely believe it as a Biggles cover even if I'd never heard of it before.