John Brason

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3565367.html

Unlike the Secret Army books, this is a straightforward novelisation of the complete TV series. (The first Secret Army book is a prequel, and the other two mix novelised TV episodes with original material.) In the days when home taping was something you did by holding a microphone up to the TV, this was the best you could get to relive the show, and it's a faithful account; the good bits are still good, and the background exposition is still not as full as I would have liked.… (mehr)

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3536318.html

It is largely a novelisation of three episodes: the bubonic plague one, Ring of Roses; the raid on a V2 launch site, Just Light the Blue Touch Paper; and the finale, The Execution, with linking narrative.

I think if I had been advising Brason, I'd have suggested giving even more time to the climax of the story and dropping the earlier bits. The plague episode is particularly weird to watch in 2020, but I think it's a dramatic miss as the tension of the situation is resolved in a bound at the end. The V2 episode looks great, but surely our heroes are acting somewhat outside their usual mandate here? As it is, the two penultimate episodes, Days of Judgement and Bridgehead, are dispatched in about three pages. However, at the end, everyone is where they are meant to be, and the book purchaser of 1979, who would have had no idea that in forty years' time we could stream the whole show, would have been glad to be reminded of a few key moments.… (mehr)

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3519928.html

The second Secret Army book includes novelisations of four episodes and two original chapters. They are two from the first series, Good Friday, the grim one set in a monastery and Be The First Kid in Your Block to Rule the World (the season finale); followed by the third chapter, Pastures New, not based on a TV episode, telling the story of how Albert moved his cafe to the Grand' Place; and then from the second series, Russian Roulette (the one with the funny Russian escapees, with a grim ending), Phoenix (an untelevised story about a crashed British ace) and the season finale Days of Wrath (where notably the wrong regular character dies, the book having been finalised before the TV series).

The writing is good - we have to remember that at the time, with no home video, it seemed entirely likely that nobody would ever see Secret Army again, unless it got a summer repeat, and the novel would be the only way to experience the show again. How things have changed...… (mehr)

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3511469.html

The book tells of how young Lisa Colbert loses her lover and family in the early days of the German invasion and occupation of Belgium, and then links up through her uncle, banker Gaston Colbert, and his friend Dr Keldermans, with innkeeper Albert Foiret who provides the cover that she needs to set up Lifeline. It actually has a lot more back-story than appears on the TV screen, and I think I'd recommend that the interested potential fan read the book first; it is entirely set before the action of the TV stories. (Unlike the other three books which are basically novelisations.)… (mehr)