REVIEW: The Purple Valley
Mar. 17th, 2019 08:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThe Purple Valley: Malcolm Saville Girls Gone By Publishers, 2017.
Having reread ‘Three Towers in Tuscany’, I turned to its sequel, the second in the Secret Service/Marston Baines series. Simon Baines, the main character of the first book, is approaching the end of his second year at Oxford University, when his uncle, Marston Baines, turns up, inviting him on a holiday in Provence. After the events of the previous summer, Simon knows to expect that there’ll be more going on than a simple holiday.
I found it difficult to switch off my critical faculties/inner grump and go along with the story. One thing that surprised me, given that Saville produced the successful Lone Pine series, was that two of the main characters of ‘Three Towers in Tuscany’ were dropped. Perhaps it was no surprise that Rosina, Simon’s love interest there, was forgotten, as she didn’t attend Oxford, which plays a big part in the opening of the story, but what about Patrick? Just a mention would do of someone who was meant to be a big chum of Simon’s and Charles’s. Charles does get to tag along on the trip.
As for the plot, it featured too many coincidences for me. That the girl Simon saves from getting run down in Oxford, Annabelle, is worried about her friend Kate is one thing. But Annabelle takes Kate to literally the last place in the world to help the burgeoning drug addict recover. She impetuously invites Simon along. And it’s a place that Marston Baines happens to have experience of from the war. And the first man that the Baines party meet on their way to France happens to have a good reason for warning them off their plans (and thus making them suspicious). So many coincidences!
As we know, Simon’s uncle is a secret agent with the perfect cover of being a thriller writer, which feels like a little wish fulfilment from Saville. Marston Baines is recovering from an operation when his boss gets in touch, driven by personal reasons (another coincidence, and one that could have led to a more interesting plotline – if the daughter of the head of the secret service had been specifically targeted, instead of being caught up as any old university student, there on merit and not at all the education daddy had brought her). University students are showing signs of getting addicted to a new form of ‘marihuana’, and a few have died from it – the authorities are worried. Marston Baines is given instructions to look into this, but nothing as strenuous as investigating, while continuing to recuperate, and he needs Simon’s help.
With all that has happened in terms of drugs since the book was first published, including decades of ‘the war on drugs’ that is referred to in this book, the perspective seems stuffily well-meaning and Canute-like. The treatment of Kate as someone suffering from a sickness is kind (although apparently all she needed was a boyfriend to help cure her???)
As for the treatment of women, I liked Annabelle – I’d have liked the book more if she were the protagonist. Half-English, half-French, brought up by her father, formerly a member of the Maquis, she’s got enterprise. I didn’t buy the connection between her and Simon. She’s in shock when they first meet. Would he really make such an impression? Saville implies that it’s as much the force of her personality than her looks (but they’re not bad) that attracts Simon to her, and we do get a description of his looks! Irreverent Charles has a coup de foudre with Annabelle’s recovering pal Kate, who he’s always thought gorgeous when he came across her in Oxford. She responds to his ‘bullying’ – the book’s verb – her out of hysteria with devotion. Strange girl. It is all from the male perspective.
I was more bothered by the four’s insistence on being in on the action during a jam-packed 24 hours, way past sense. Kate wasn’t well and had been through a lot physically and had little French; Charles was injured; they were all running on fumes by the end – Simon shouldn’t have been driving. Although Annabelle showed a lot of ingenuity in the face of danger, mainly creating a distraction so Simon could act, worrying about her presence was a problem for him. But my point was that they could have left all this to the others, including the police, even if that would have been a narrative headache.
And then there was the handwaving one had to do about Marston Baines’s sloppiness. His convalescence must have affected him enough to make several mistakes instead of solving the case in hours, given that so much fell into his grasp. Characters, but especially the baddies, loved to monologue.
So that this isn’t a litany of criticisms, I will say that the parts about the Maquis and the consequences of living with that the generation that survived and their children were interesting.
This Girls Gone By publication features an introduction (as ever, I avoided reading it until after the story). It contains a cast of characters, which dispenses with Mme Castel and Costain, who are certainly less impressive presences than the wife of Il Dottore and her maid in 'Three Towers in Tuscany'. But overall Stephen Biggar’s introduction is judicious, confirming and delving into the influence of James Bond on the book.
Having reread ‘Three Towers in Tuscany’, I turned to its sequel, the second in the Secret Service/Marston Baines series. Simon Baines, the main character of the first book, is approaching the end of his second year at Oxford University, when his uncle, Marston Baines, turns up, inviting him on a holiday in Provence. After the events of the previous summer, Simon knows to expect that there’ll be more going on than a simple holiday.
I found it difficult to switch off my critical faculties/inner grump and go along with the story. One thing that surprised me, given that Saville produced the successful Lone Pine series, was that two of the main characters of ‘Three Towers in Tuscany’ were dropped. Perhaps it was no surprise that Rosina, Simon’s love interest there, was forgotten, as she didn’t attend Oxford, which plays a big part in the opening of the story, but what about Patrick? Just a mention would do of someone who was meant to be a big chum of Simon’s and Charles’s. Charles does get to tag along on the trip.
As for the plot, it featured too many coincidences for me. That the girl Simon saves from getting run down in Oxford, Annabelle, is worried about her friend Kate is one thing. But Annabelle takes Kate to literally the last place in the world to help the burgeoning drug addict recover. She impetuously invites Simon along. And it’s a place that Marston Baines happens to have experience of from the war. And the first man that the Baines party meet on their way to France happens to have a good reason for warning them off their plans (and thus making them suspicious). So many coincidences!
As we know, Simon’s uncle is a secret agent with the perfect cover of being a thriller writer, which feels like a little wish fulfilment from Saville. Marston Baines is recovering from an operation when his boss gets in touch, driven by personal reasons (another coincidence, and one that could have led to a more interesting plotline – if the daughter of the head of the secret service had been specifically targeted, instead of being caught up as any old university student, there on merit and not at all the education daddy had brought her). University students are showing signs of getting addicted to a new form of ‘marihuana’, and a few have died from it – the authorities are worried. Marston Baines is given instructions to look into this, but nothing as strenuous as investigating, while continuing to recuperate, and he needs Simon’s help.
With all that has happened in terms of drugs since the book was first published, including decades of ‘the war on drugs’ that is referred to in this book, the perspective seems stuffily well-meaning and Canute-like. The treatment of Kate as someone suffering from a sickness is kind (although apparently all she needed was a boyfriend to help cure her???)
As for the treatment of women, I liked Annabelle – I’d have liked the book more if she were the protagonist. Half-English, half-French, brought up by her father, formerly a member of the Maquis, she’s got enterprise. I didn’t buy the connection between her and Simon. She’s in shock when they first meet. Would he really make such an impression? Saville implies that it’s as much the force of her personality than her looks (but they’re not bad) that attracts Simon to her, and we do get a description of his looks! Irreverent Charles has a coup de foudre with Annabelle’s recovering pal Kate, who he’s always thought gorgeous when he came across her in Oxford. She responds to his ‘bullying’ – the book’s verb – her out of hysteria with devotion. Strange girl. It is all from the male perspective.
I was more bothered by the four’s insistence on being in on the action during a jam-packed 24 hours, way past sense. Kate wasn’t well and had been through a lot physically and had little French; Charles was injured; they were all running on fumes by the end – Simon shouldn’t have been driving. Although Annabelle showed a lot of ingenuity in the face of danger, mainly creating a distraction so Simon could act, worrying about her presence was a problem for him. But my point was that they could have left all this to the others, including the police, even if that would have been a narrative headache.
And then there was the handwaving one had to do about Marston Baines’s sloppiness. His convalescence must have affected him enough to make several mistakes instead of solving the case in hours, given that so much fell into his grasp. Characters, but especially the baddies, loved to monologue.
So that this isn’t a litany of criticisms, I will say that the parts about the Maquis and the consequences of living with that the generation that survived and their children were interesting.
This Girls Gone By publication features an introduction (as ever, I avoided reading it until after the story). It contains a cast of characters, which dispenses with Mme Castel and Costain, who are certainly less impressive presences than the wife of Il Dottore and her maid in 'Three Towers in Tuscany'. But overall Stephen Biggar’s introduction is judicious, confirming and delving into the influence of James Bond on the book.
