Tuesday September 28, 2004

Jack Higgins books

Of course everyone knows his most famous book The Eagle has landed. The story (or is it factual) of the German plot to kidnap Churchill while he was having a steak and kidney pie in Norfolk in a country retreat. The inevitable follow on book appeared but was no where close as good. The Eagle has flown is the title.

Like Ian Fleming Higgins does know his stuff he has inside knowledge and when he introduced Dillon (a member of the IRA) who ends up working for a secret organisation who are only responsible to the PM it looked like a good idea. Trouble is he has lost the plot dare I say and milked the idea too often. The latest books that involve a fued with the Rashid family who Dillon wipes out by the end of the second book ( we hope ) have lost his previous storytelling ability.

There always seems to be a Judas gate, someone is always saying something softly, familier sentences keep appearing.

Going back in time some of the older books are good;

Thunder point, a story of how a U boat was found by a lone diver that held paperwork that someone did not want found is a good yarn.

Luciano's Luck, the story of how a convict was let out of prison in order to persuade the Mafia to assist in a uprising when the invasion of Scilly occured.

Night of the Fox, the story of Henry Martineau who has to go and recover Hugh Kelso who gets washed up on the German occupied shore of Jersey and bring him back to blighty.

Solo A piano player, part time asassin who is a Cretan being pursued by an SAS soldier.

Cold Harbour, where Craig Osbourne gets sent back one more time to German occupied France for a mission to far.

Exocet, how an Argentinian pilot had to try and get the weapon to help them win the Falklands war

So all in all not a bad bunch of books. I usually read one on holiday it is a good relaxing easy read

Enteprise Backup nee Networker bootstrap info

I have a way of storing this very important data but I let the machine do the work ...

I have a rotating sequence of these files one for each day of the week. I run the cron job on machines we have in other countries for added security. So if my server goes down or its media database is trashed I can quickly find out the latest bootstrap and on what tape to use to get the product up and running again.

I also query the media database about root /var etc backups for the server and its clients again to speed up recoveryif the database is down. If you have the client packages for a laptop you could run the report everytime you put your laptop on the network and know the information is safe.

James Bond Books

I started reading Ian Fleming's books on James Bond as a teenager. I am continuing to reread them even now. If you buy a new one there is a good forward on Bond and Fleming written by Anthony Burgess which sums up the whole Bond character and how Fleming's is interwoven into it.

As Fleming worked in the secret service during the war he knew what he was writing about. The Russian organisation Smersh really did ( does) exist. He came up with covert operations for SIS which probably sowed seeds in his journalistic mind about the character Bond. In many ways I think Bond was the person Fleming wanted to be. I don't think he would have made it into the 'field' as he was a sickly man partly due to a sports injury he got at Eton on the playing field.

Fleming's character's are enormous. The criminals, Bond himself and of course 'M'. The details in the action in the books are mind boggling. That is why I reread them. I always find a little bit more each time that my eyes missed last time.

The books are small in number but like that TV series ( Fawlty towers being the best example) which they made just the right number means each book is perfect. I don't think he could have written many more without the plots becoming similar and loosing that edge each book has. To add to the collection are two that have short stories. Also the 'strange' The Spy who loved me the story of a woman who Bond meets and rescues from a gang.

The best for me are Thunderball, Dr No and Moonraker. In all of the books on Bond is the romantic interest and as Anthony Burgess points out each has a little imprefection, for Honey Child in Dr No her broken nose, the limp that Domino has in Thunderball.

The films of course were destined to move away from the storlyline as time marched on. Moonraker if filmed as per the story would show the UK developing with the aid of Drax the first nuclear weapon. As it was it had to be modernised with the space shuttle. Thunderball must be the best inline with the book.

as regards the modern books by John Gardener, Kingsley Amis and Raymond Benson, Amis single one Colonel Sun is the best , Benson's are not bad, Gardener's passable. In all cases these modern books have Bond in the modern ages and he must be sixty but still fighting Mick Jagger fit.

As in all things the best is the first.