{"id":19573,"date":"2024-05-02T20:16:48","date_gmt":"2024-05-03T00:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19573"},"modified":"2024-05-02T20:16:48","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T00:16:48","slug":"the-summer-of-66-by-dan-wheatcroft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=19573","title":{"rendered":"‘The Summer of 66,’ by Dan Wheatcroft"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The novel, The Box<\/em><\/strong>, by Dan Wheatcroft, which I reviewed the other day, turned out to be a continuation of an existing series of two books about British counterespionage in decades past. I was intrigued enough to pick up the first novel, The Summer of 66<\/a><\/em>, whose hero (he only appears briefly in The Box<\/em>) is agent John Gallagher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story begins with young Gallagher, formerly of Special Branch, being transferred to the Home Office Statistical Unit, a suitably dull cover for an intelligence operation. In contrast to our ingrained images of James Bond\u2019s world, Gallagher\u2019s new workplace is notably dull. It looks like a slightly shopworn small business operation, not very well funded. (The not very well-funded part, at least, is true. When John eventually gets outfitted with a weapon, it\u2019s no state of the art armament from Q, but a standard revolver. The budget is too tight to allocate him as many cartridges as he\u2019d like.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first operation John is involved in concerns the problem of a suspicious number of cryptologists involved in a certain secret project having recently committed suicide. Do the Russians have a method for inducing depression and despair? The group\u2019s investigations uncover a ring of ruthless deep-cover agents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not entirely sure why I enjoy these books as much as I do. They have noticeable weaknesses. The prose isn\u2019t top-shelf (misplaced modifiers are sometimes among the problems). I can only describe the plotting as dense \u2013 we\u2019re bombarded with information, and it\u2019s often difficult to follow the many story threads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I think it\u2019s that very denseness that makes the books compelling \u2013 for me. There\u2019s an authentic sense of real life here \u2013 the way I myself feel when multiple stimuli threaten to overwhelm me. (Author Wheatcroft confesses in his bio to being on the autism scale. Since I believe I\u2019m low-level autistic myself, that may be what attracts me.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A genuflection is made to the altar of gay rights in this book, but the author demonstrated himself un-Woke in The Box<\/em>, so I let that go by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not sure if normal readers will enjoy The Summer of 66 <\/em>as much as I did. But I certainly did enjoy it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The novel, The Box, by Dan Wheatcroft, which I reviewed the other day, turned out to be a continuation of an existing series of two books about British counterespionage in decades past. I was intrigued enough to pick up the first novel, The Summer of 66, whose hero (he only appears briefly in The Box) … Continue reading ‘The Summer of 66,’ by Dan Wheatcroft<\/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":[5175,5180,5181],"class_list":["post-19573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-dan-wheatcroft","tag-john-gallagher","tag-the-summer-of-66"],"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\/19573","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=19573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19574,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19573\/revisions\/19574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}