{"id":15392,"date":"2021-05-20T19:20:19","date_gmt":"2021-05-20T23:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15392"},"modified":"2021-05-20T19:20:19","modified_gmt":"2021-05-20T23:20:19","slug":"basils-war-by-stephen-hunter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=15392","title":{"rendered":"‘Basil’s War,’ by Stephen Hunter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In fact, in one sense, the Third Reich and its adventure in mass death was a conspiracy against irony. Perhaps that is why Basil hated it so much and fought it so hard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

First of all, <\/strong>I have to take back a criticism of this book that I made last night. I said I was reading a novella I\u2019d read before, which had been simply re-titled. Now that I\u2019ve completed Basil\u2019s War,<\/a><\/em> based on the novella Citadel<\/em>, I see that it is in fact a full novel (though a short one for author Stephen Hunter). He took Citadel <\/em>and added some new action (mostly at the end), and made the whole thing a lot more complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basil St. Florian is a British SOE agent in World War II. Like the character in Beau Geste<\/em>, he possesses almost no virtue save courage. He\u2019s good at lying, stealing, killing, and seducing women. In ordinary civilian life, he\u2019d probably end up in prison. But now, as a top field agent, he\u2019s more likely to end up dead \u2013 and he isn\u2019t greatly concerned about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a secret war room under London, he gets briefed (by Alan Turing, among others) on his next mission (should he choose to accept it), which will involve making his way to Paris and into a museum library. There he is to photograph certain pages from a rare manuscript, which has been used as a \u201cbook code.\u201d This code will identify a Russian agent in the Bletchley Park cryptography operation. There are reasons for this, but Basil\u2019s job is to get to the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We follow Basil as he parachutes into France, steals false identity papers, bluffs his way through security checks, and generally stays one step ahead of the Germans \u2013 until he loses a step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basil is an interesting character to follow \u2013 he\u2019s very good at his job, and more sympathetic than he probably ought to be, mostly because of his wit. The book is full of mordant observations on the nature of war and of warriors, plus the characters of the French and the Germans. (As well as intimate moments with Vivian Leigh.) The riddles within enigmas that unfold at the end are clever and surprising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen Hunter is a fine thriller writer, and I think most readers will enjoy Basil\u2019s War<\/em>. Cautions for mature material, but for a war story it\u2019s pretty lighthearted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In fact, in one sense, the Third Reich and its adventure in mass death was a conspiracy against irony. Perhaps that is why Basil hated it so much and fought it so hard. First of all, I have to take back a criticism of this book that I made last night. I said I was … Continue reading ‘Basil’s War,’ by Stephen Hunter<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[3718,2667],"class_list":["post-15392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-basils-war","tag-stephen-hunter"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15392"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15394,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15392\/revisions\/15394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}