A Time to Kill

A Rough Shoot - Geoffrey Household
A Time to Kill - Geoffrey Household
Two novels published in 1951 by Geoffrey Household who specialised in thrillers of the more genteel English kind. He wrote over 25 novels and scored big with Rogue Male (filmed as Manhunt) near the start of his career in 1939. He served in British Intelligence during the second world war and afterwards lived the life of a country gentleman when he wrote most of his books. These two novels feature his character Roger Taine who works as a surveyor in Dorset England after service in the war and gets mixed up with a bunch of spies in the period shortly after the end of the war. Household writes well about the countryside that was familiar to him and also captures the show more uncertainty of dealings with foreign people and/or agents acting in Britain after the defeat of the Nazis.

Roger Taine himself is not quite a country gentleman, but a vigorous individual fresh back from the war and working as salesman of building materials. In A Rough Shoot he has rented shooting rights in an area near his home, he is married with two children and likes to get out of the house after work with his gun to roam around his shoot. One evening from a hide he sees an individual acting suspiciously, he decides to teach him a lesson with a shot of buckshot. The man falls forward onto some spikes he is carrying and when Taine gets to him he is dead. Taine is a man who tries to do the right thing, but when he sees what he has done he realises he would go down for murder and so he quickly hides the body, before deciding what to do. When he retraces his steps the next day he sees other individuals, not the police, searching the area and after a talk with a nearby landowner who is involved organising a fascist ring of individuals he finds himself caught up in a desperate adventure to clear his name.

The events of the early part of this novel take place on a relatively small area of English countryside and Tain's intimate connection with the land is so well drawn that I could easily picture the action taking place. Taine gets involved with Polish agents and spies as well as disaffected Germans and the story is a battle of wits rather than blood thirsty action. Taine survives to fight another day and in the next book A Time to Kill his spymaster based in London lures him unwillingly back into amateur action to deal with a so called mopping up operation. This time the action centres around Poole Harbour and the Purbeck cliffs and Taine's life and his family are in danger. Again the feature of this story is the countryside and seascape around the County of Dorset as Taine must link up with a protagonist of the first book to fight against a more determined nest of spies.

After reading the first instalment; A Rough Shoot I was happy to follow a new storyline in A Time to KIll. These two books certainly evoke a period that is often shown in 1950's British films. A hero who fights gallantly against the odds, but whose local knowledge and intelligence is enough when pitted against foreign agents. Two novels that do more than most books I have read (published in 1951) that capture a time and place so well. There is a certain amount of realism in the background to the story that makes it seem, not at all far-fetched. Both books were an entertaining read and so 3.5 stars. show less

This is a sequel to A Rough Shoot, which was one of the first Household stories I read, and one I liked very much. In this book a former member of the neofascist organization the hero defeated in the last book reports that some other former members have joined a communist plot and the hero is assigned to investigate it.