Click here to see the latest Readers Write
Other Quick Links: About Derek Robinson Better Rugby Refereeing
|
SUMMER
(Robinson's gone mad. It must be the heat!) Every book (except Hornet's
Sting) is now £10 a copy in the PLUS
you get a FREE Copy of War Story! a
novel of the RFC over the PAYMENT - IN UK by cheque or PayPal. In Europe or elsewhere by PayPal. Click here for payment methods |
|
- brand new Derek Robinson novel for only a tenner 'Operation Bamboozle' is a fastmoving black comedy about what happens when a high-stakes con artist takes on the Mob in Los Angeles. The result is a heady brew of disorganised crime, hot dollars, triple virgins and dead bodies in the begonias. Luis Cabrillo is the con artist, Julie Conroy is his squeeze, and here's the opening sentence:
'Operation Bamboozle' is strong on humour and big on surprises, including the price - £10 inc. p&p in the UK or Europe. Outside the UK it's £15 inc. p&p. |
First edition 232 pages
Each copy numbered and signed Click here for payment methods |
'Damned Good Show' and 'Red Rag Blues'
|
FRESH OFF THE PRESS
'DAMNED GOOD SHOW'
(reprint)
Top Flight
Many people believe RAF Bomber Command's war began with the
Lancaster bomber. Not so. From day one of WW2, squadrons flying
twin-engine Hampdens (the 'flying suitcase') and Wellingtons (the
'Wimpy') took off on operations - not so much to help win the war
as not to lose it.
"Here's what you get," The Guardian wrote of 'Damned Good
Show', "tough, taut prose that pulls you through the book like a
steel cable... the acrid tang of veracity." Off-duty, pilots fell
in love like all other young men. Reviewing DGS, the Daily Express
said: "although it is sparely told, it captures perfectly the
excitement and sadness of wartime romance...Flying is hard to write
about, but Robinson never loses his way, or his dry eye. A
masterpiece."
To read the reviews in full,
click here.
HOW TO GET IT. This reprint is in
paperback format.
For buyers in the Click here for payment methods |
FIRST TIME IN PAPERBACK
'RED RAG BLUES'
He's a heel, bless him.
Luis Cabrillo rides again in this "dashing tale of Nazis and
Mafiosi", as The Observer called it. (To read the full review,
click
here.)
In fact, Nazis and Mafiosi play second fiddle to the real dynamo
in this story. It's 1953, and Senator Joe McCarthy's witchhunt for
Reds under beds is scaring America witless.
Cue Luis Cabrillo, ex-double agent, now con artist supreme. Dollars flow, hotly pursued by bullets. Luis doesn't know it, but FBI, MI5, KGB and CIA have him firmly in their sights. Not to mention Stevie, the only three-times married virgin in New York City. This is a rich, fast and very black comedy.
HOW TO GET IT
This reprint is in paperback format: 282 pages. Copies are available from me, at the address on the left. Price in the UK or Europe is £10 per copy, including first class postage.Outside the UK - £15 per copy, including airmail postage. Click here for payment methods Problems? Email me here or write to me at: Shapland House, Somerset Street, Kingsdown, Bristol BS2 8LZ |
|
Reviews:
The first commercial review of HRGE, by Nicholas Lezard of the UK's Guardiannewspaper, appeared on the 18th of April. See it here. "WAR CRACKER IN FROM THE COLD" was the News of the World's headline for Matthew Nixson's review of 'Hullo Russia' on 10th May. See it here . |
 |
This brand new novel is on sale in a paperback format. The limited first edition of 100 copies has sold out, but the book has been reprinted, and signed copies are available. Copies can be obtained only from the author. For buyers in the Derek Robinson and send it to him at: Kingsdown Remember to include your address, clearly written. Or pay by PayPal 
Click here for payment methods |
| A Good Clean Fight North Africa, spring 1942. Dust, heat, thirst,flies. For those who liked that sort of thing, it was a good clean fight: nothing to harm but the sand, the enemy and yourself. Enter Fanny Barton's squadron, last seen in Piece of Cake, now flying clapped-out Tomahawks on ground-strafing attacks at 300 miles an hour and zero feet. At the same time, the men of Captain Lampard's SAS patrol drive hundreds of miles behind enemy lines to plant bombs on German aircraft and vanish into the Sahara... where a German expeditionary force is hellbent on beating the SAS at its own game. Meanwhile, back at the squadron, Skull Skelton and Baggy Bletchley (survivors from Piece of Cake) join Barton with their outlandish views on the best way to carry out a good clean fight. The desert, however, has its own indisputable ideas. "A cynicism and hard-bitten humour that has you halfway between tears and laughter. Biggles was never like this." Daily Express *********************************************** A Good Clean Fight is now on sale in a limited edition of 100 copies each numbered and signed. 576 pages. Price in the UK or Europe is £10 per copy, including first class postage. Outside the UK - £15 per copy, including airmail postage. Click here for payment methods |
|
in a limited
edition of 100 copies,
each numbered and signed.
PRICE
IN
U.K. or Europe -
£15 per copy, including p&p (That’s the
U.S. and Canada and the rest of the world)
Payment by PayPal is usually the best option - see below. |
 |
| Paying by PayPal Whether or not you are in the You don't need to have a personal PayPal account. All you need is a credit or debit Paying by Cheque - make cheque payable to Derek Robinson, and send to Shapland House, |
|
Shot down by Rex, Lambs into Tigers in
and 'A man has to do what a man has to do' when he's Luis Cabrillo. Some actors say they get inside the skin of the characters they're playing by first mastering the way that character walks. I knew an actor like that, normally a charming chap but he couldn't get out of character during the run of the play; and sometimes that was rough on the family, especially when he was cast as a crude and selfish oaf. Every morning he would lurch downstairs, slump into a chair, curse the cat and demand a mug of tea in a voice made of gravel. Not easy to live with. Actors live the part. When the TV series of Piece of Cake was being filmed on location, Tim Woodward - a pacifist in his younger years - played Rex, the squadron CO, a hard, ambitious and arrogant man. During a break in the filming I unexpectedly met Rex, in uniform, still looking hard, ambitious and arrogant. For a second, my right arm wanted to salute him. (I'd done my National Service, and you can take the boy out of the RAF but you can never take the RAF out of the boy.) Woodward, as Rex, looked right through me. Quite right. He was a squadron leader. I was an erk. With authors, it's often names that help to
create the character. Rex was perfect for the CO (we never know
his first name). Before I could begin Goshawk Squadron I thought a lot about that
CO's name, and until I settled on Stanley Woolley, I couldn't make
him talk. I didn't want to give him a heroic name like Beauchamp
or Dalrymple or Carruthers (or Bigglesworth). I wanted something
that would cut against the grain of the usual romantic image of the RFC.
And then there's Moggy Cattermole. I named him
because he's lanky, and it helps if tall characters have long names.
I knew someone at school called Cattermole, always nicknamed Moggy, and
the combination seemed right for someone who is - as
a Battle of Britain squadron commander once told me -
"Bad for discipline, good for morale. Every squadron should have
one. Just one." The link between 'cat' and
'moggy' doesn't exist in the Which leads me to the Luis Cabrillo books,
not so much lamb-into-tiger as the saga of Tell 'Em What They Want To Hear. It
began with The Eldorado Network,
inspired by the feats of a real double agent in WW2, codenamed Garbo. He was
born in Enter a man who sees the true worth of
Luis. Graham Thorne, of "I loved the classic Robinson opening paragraph, which
brought me straight into the plot and made me want to know immediately what was
going on. I also loved the headlong twists and turns of the plot and the fact
that, for ages, I could not figure out what on earth the map on the cover had to
do with the book I was reading. The rapid-fire and amoral style in which the book is written
seems to me to capture perfectly what it would be like to know, and live with,
Luis Cabrillo. He has immense charm and wit but also that whiff of danger
- and borderline lunacy - that
makes us ordinary readers secretly glad to know him from a
distance. It was a joy to meet the gorgeous Stevie Fantoni again and a
privilege to be introduced to the Princess Chuckling Stream. Among the superb
supporting cast of hoods and enforcers, I particularly liked the psychotic Vito
DiLazzari. He is the classic, indulged son of the tyrant,
over-educated, so that he knows too much for his hereditary role - Fox instead of
Hedgehog. So where now for Conroy and Cabrillo? I hope we hear more of
them. For, as Luis gets older and that little bit slower, and as the world gets
more conformist with less room for the maverick, then life for Luis will get
steadily tougher. Like a late Western, there is a great book to be
written about a man running out of room, and Derek Robinson is the man to do
it." Well, time will tell. Are con
artists an endangered species? Recently, an unemployed
lorry-driver conned a property developer out of £1 million by persuading him
that the Savoy Hotel in So: thanks to Graham, and to far-flung readers who recently asked for books - Anders in Sweden, David in Malaysia, Matt in Wisconsin, Fred in Virginia, Christopher in Spain, Lars in Denmark, Blair in Minneapolis, and many more. My thanks to all who wrote. Derek Robinson Previous Readers Write |
I am an author, English, who has cornered the market in flying novels - three about the Royal Flying corps in WW1, three about the RAF in WW2 . Best known is Goshawk Squadron, which would have won the Booker Prize in 1971 if Saul Bellow, one of the judges, had had his way. "The most readable novel of the year," Nina Bawden said in the Daily Telegraph. "I laughed aloud several times, and was in the end reduced to tears."
My other fiction hits other targets. As well as a trilogy
- soon to be a quartet (see panel above) - about Luis Cabrillo, it includes Kentucky Blues, a sprawling
western in which everyone - blacks and whites - gets the blues.
"A wonderful novel," said the Daily Telegraph, "full of hilarious and
thought-provoking incident." - and not an aeroplane in
sight.
I'm
told these novels reveal a streak
of black humour and a certain debunking of the myths of war, plus what
Paul Scott called "a narrative gift that sets up the hackles of
involvement". The American critic
Paul Fussell commented, "I defy the reader to put the book down once
Robinson has got him into the air."
Biography
Click
here to
see all my books displayed in topic groups.
or click on
an individual title:
Goshawk Squadron War Story, Hornet's Sting
Piece of Cake,
A Good Clean
Fight Damned
Good Show Invasion 1940 Hullo Russia, Goodbye England
The Eldorado Network Artillery of
Lies Red
Rag Blues Kramer's War, Kentucky
Blues, Rotten
With HonourBetter Rugby Refereeing Rugby - A Player's Guide to
the Laws Run
With the Ball A Darker Side of Bristol, A Load of Old Bristle,
Sick Sentries of Bristle Pure Bristle
|
Rights
and Opportunities
CopyrightI own all rights - literary, dramatic, cinema, television radio, DVD and the rest - to all my books, with one exception. In 1971 Sam Goldwyn Jr bought the movie rights to Goshawk Squadron. So far, no movie. Make him an offer. Who knows, he might sell. For everything else, make me an offer. I'm definitely interested. Opportunities Book reviewers often remark on the suitability of my books for filming. So far, one has made it to the screen: in 1988 Piece of Cake became a 6-part TV series. Got a big audience, was shown worldwide, now available on DVD. See for yourself, then read the book. I suppose I'm biased, but some of my titles seem to me to be tailormade for the screen. Kramer's War is set on the photogenic island of Jersey, where many German fortifications still survive more or less intact. All the action in A Good Clean Fight takes place in the North African desert (sand is cheap, and a few WW2 Tomahawk fighters still exist). The Eldorado Network is a story of war set in neutral Madrid and Lisbon: no actual battles, but the conflict is endless. Kentucky Blues, "a sprawling, sometimes tragic portrait of a nation being rocked by enormous change", would seem to me to have all the makings of a TV mini-series. And the latest yarn, Red Rag Blues, is a bleakly comic scam in the best Hollywood tradition. There you have it - plot, characters, dialogue all exist. Over to you, whoever you are. Derek Robinson Contact I welcome comments and views about my books, though as a working writer I can't guarantee to have sufficient time to answer everyone. Click here to send me an email. |
 
 |
 
  The RAF Quintet (WW2) |
 
 |
 |
New! 
 |
    |
|
Major books
and original publication dates: 1971 Goshawk Squadron 1973 Rotten with Honour 1977 Kramer's War 1979 The Eldorado Network 1983 Piece of Cake 1987 War Story 1991 Artillery of Lies 1993 A Good Clean Fight 1999 Hornet's Sting 2002 Damned Good Show 2002 Kentucky Blues 2005 Invasion 1940 2005 Red Rag Blues 2008 Hullo Russia, Goodbye England 2009 Operation Bamboozle |
