Background
Son of a father in the Indian Army, who died in the sinking of the Steamship Persia just before his son"s birth, Lodwick attended Cheltenham College and the Royal Naval Academy at Dartmouth.
("Brother Death is perhaps John Lodwick's most original an...)
"Brother Death is perhaps John Lodwick's most original and ambitious thriller, combining the moral questioning of Graham Greene with the edge-of-your-seat suspense of Geoffrey Household or Hitchcock." - Michael Moorcock "Mr. Lodwick writes with great accomplishment, softening his brutalities with a sardonic humour." - Lionel Hale, Observer "Mr. Lodwick is a clever writer who goes all out to be tough. It should gratify him to hear that this reviewer thinks Brother Death a perfectly horrid book, for he can hardly have meant it to be anything else.... there is no denying that Mr. Lodwick's style is admirable, that he can make a point with the minimum of words and can be very good company." - Guardian "One of the wittiest and most original talents of his generation." - Peter Green, Telegraph "Mr. Lodwick is one of the few true craftsmen writing in English." - The Observer "John Lodwick has a richness of invention and a command of words equal to Evelyn Waugh." - Daily Herald Eric Rumbold is a mercenary adventurer, adrift in the back streets of Marseilles, where he makes a precarious living as a counterfeiter and black marketeer. Totally lacking either principles or moral scruples, Rumbold had been a top spy, saboteur, and killer for the British during the war but finds his talents of little use in peacetime. When the alluring Fiona Lampeter meets Rumbold, she knows she's found the man she's been looking for. Her young son stands in the way of her inheriting the family fortune: she wants the boy dead and is willing to make the job well worth Rumbold's while. Drawn into the Lampeter family's web of intrigue and deceit, Rumbold lays the plans for the horrific and cold-blooded murder of an innocent child ... and in the novel's unforgettable climax, at least one of them will make the acquaintance of Brother Death. One of the best selling authors of his day, John Lodwick's novels were characterized by their fast pace, sardonic humour, and brilliant prose. Admired by Somerset Maugham, John Betjeman, and Anthony Burgess, and often compared with Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, Lodwick fell into obscurity after his death in a car crash in 1959 at age 43. This edition of Brother Death (1948) is the first republication of any of his works since his death and includes a new introduction by Chris Petit.
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Son of a father in the Indian Army, who died in the sinking of the Steamship Persia just before his son"s birth, Lodwick attended Cheltenham College and the Royal Naval Academy at Dartmouth.
He spent some time working as a journalist in Dublin before moving to France. He later recalled writing several unpublished novels during this period, but in a contrasting account stated that he wrote only plays. His prize-winning first novel, which he began to write while stranded in Vichy France, Running to Paradise, is a fictionalised account of combat with the Legion and experiences as a prisoner of war.
Subsequently he served as an officer in the Special Operations Executive, parachuting behind enemy lines to work undercover as a saboteur, and, in the rank of Captain, served with the Special Boat Service on raids in the Mediterranean and the Aegean.
He was mentioned in despatches in 1945. In addition to novels, he also published two volumes of autobiography, the second left incomplete at the time of his death in a car accident in Spain.
Some of his books reflect his war experiences, including his exploits as an officer in the Special Boat Service. He also wrote thrillers which analyse the psychological and spiritual motivations of their protagonists.
Bid The Soldiers Shoot (1958)
The Asparagus Trench: An Autobiographical Beginning (1960).
("Brother Death is perhaps John Lodwick's most original an...)
(1st print Pan 340 1955 edition paperback, vg++ In stock s...)
(Light wear to boards, content clean - solidly bound. Fair...)
(1st Panther 898 edition paperback good condition. In stoc...)
(Genereal wear to boards. Content lightly toned. No DJ.)
A few years after Lodwick"s death, Anthony Burgess wrote: "He is not afraid of rhetoric, grandiloquence. His knowledge of foreign literature is wide. His mastery of the English language matches Evelyn Waugh"son" He warned, nevertheless, that because of his early death he was "in danger of being neglected", and indeed Doctorate. J. Taylor has written that in the post-war years Lodwick"s "doomy romanticism sat queerly alongside the comic realism of a Waterhouse or an Amis: Lodwick"s reputation did not survive the 1960s." He has been described as an "odd-man-out" among his literary contemporaries, and credited with a "picaresque and romantic" imagination.