A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

During the Finnish Winter War in WWII, Biggles and his crew find a dying Polish scientist with important papers, and thus one of Johns' oddest plots is launched. The papers keep getting obtained, lost, hidden, lost again, regained, buried, drowned, flown around, and so forth. By the end I was half-expecting them to be eaten by slugs. (The final fate of some important papers in a Joan Aiken book).

The majority of the action of this book is caused by Biggles and his crew making bad decisions. If they'd just kept the papers rather than repeatedly hiding them, which invariably means they lose them and then have to go back for them, the book would be twenty pages long.

Some of this can be explained by Biggles getting a severe concussion followed by a doctor giving him a "pick-me-up" which I am pretty sure is some kind of amphetamine, most likely Benzedrine. He immediately rushes off with a shovel and some biscuits, sits up all night in a plane on a frozen lake because he can't sleep, forgets that ice melts, maniacally taxis around the now-liquid lake even though he knows he can't take off, starts to leave on foot, rushes back, gets chased by a bear...

However, this doesn't explain everyone else's behavior. Von Stalhein, who is now with the Russians because... who knows really... particularly seems to have a split personality. But basically everyone is completely off their heads in this book. They even explicitly talk about it!

Biggles: "It’s the daftest thing I ever did or ever heard of."

Ginger: Immediately a sort of madness came upon him. ... He felt that the whole thing was becoming preposterous - ludicrous. "I'm going crazy," he told himself.

Perspiration broke out on his forehead, and his expression was that of a man whom — as the Romans used to say — the gods had deprived of his wits. At that moment his rage was such that had he had the papers in his hand he would have torn them to shreds with his teeth. He loathed them and everything to do with them.

Biggles on the verge of a nervous breakdown: "You know, kid," murmured Biggles in a strained voice when Ginger had finished, "this business is getting me dizzy. It’s uncanny; it’s crazy; it’s one of those stories that goes on and on always coming back to the same place. Writers have made a big song about Jason and the Golden Fleece. Pah! Jason did nothing. He ought to have had a crack at this job. I don’t often give way to despair, but by the anti-clockwise propeller of my sainted aunt, I’m getting to the state when I could throw myself down and burst into tears — like a little girl who’s lost her bag of sweets. Well, I suppose it’s no use sitting here. Let’s go and look for the papers — we shall probably find they’ve been eaten by a rabbit."

"What do we do in that case—catch the rabbit?" grinned Ginger.

"Let’s wait till we get there, then I’ll tell you. Only one thing I ask you if you have any respect for my sanity. Don’t, when we get there, tell me that you’ve forgotten which tree they’re under. It only needs one more little thing to give me shrieking hysterics.”

sevenall has notes on the Swedish translation of this book.

I wrote in comments, "The plot makes more sense if everyone has a head injury and is on speed, not just Biggles."

sevenall: "At some places in the book, I thought *I* might have a head injury."

This one's on Kindle!

“It’s getting near octopus time.”

Several ships sink with all hands lost, in the same area, after sending out an SOS mentioning “bad whether.” Biggles finds this very fishy. But investigating it, let alone doing anything about it, requires a big combined operation, so he gets himself temporarily commissioned as an Air Commodore so he can command both ships and planes.

This book focuses on Biggles’s responsibility as a commander of a large operation rather than a small team. There are some real losses, and he takes the deaths of men under his command personally. After getting a deathbed report from a young sailor, he walks off to cry, then pulls himself together to figure out his next move.

Despite a serious theme, it’s overall a very fun book, with excellent and inventive action sequences, some terrific settings, and plenty of creatures. Ginger is chased by a crocodile again, Algy is attacked by ants, and a decapod decamps with a dinghy.

To swim for it with that ghastly creature about was unthinkable. He knew what it was, of course: either an octopus or a decapod, perhaps the most loathsome living thing in all creation.

I don’t think Johns ever encountered an actual octopus because I am pretty sure they cannot actually chase people over dry land. Or if they can, there’s no need to flee in terror as you can just walk away. But maybe that’s just octopuses, not the dreaded decapods!

A swift glace backward revealed both monsters not thirty yards behind, moving swiftly over the ground in a sort of rolling motion.

Decapods aside, the book has some lovely descriptive writing. Below, the islands of the Mergui Archipelago lay like a necklace of emeralds dropped carelessly on a turquoise robe.

There are some racist bits but they’re individual lines or scenes rather than pervasive.

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The others joined in the famous refrain, roaring it at the top of their voices.

'Drink and the devil had done for the rest,
Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum.'

Algy, looking through the loophole, saw the astonished faces of the soldiers peering out of the jungle. "They think we've gone crazy," he declared.

Biggles nodded. "They're not far wrong, either," he murmured drily. Then his eyes glinted. "Avast there, pipe down," he cried. "Here comes the boat."

The one where Biggles and crew play pirates! Literally. They not only get involved in a pirate adventure, but they dress up as pirate, fly the Jolly Roger, and take on pirate names from Treasure Island I swear to God. Biggles is Captain Smollett. It's hilarious.

It begins with a historical prologue about pirates and a cursed doubloon which is the most piratical thing I have ever read. It's absolutely delightful. In another universe, Johns wrote historical adventures and they were great.

The main story begins with a teenage boy named Dick living mostly on his own. He gets the tragic news that his father, a sailor, has died, but managed to send him 1) a letter describing how he found a cache of pirate treasure on an uninhabited island and how his shipmate tried to kill him for it and now he's dying, 2) a rather vague map to the treasure, 3) one gold doubloon.

No sooner has Dick received this than the shipmate bursts in and tries to kill him and steal the doubloon, letter, and map. (The shipmate knows about the island and treasure, but not the exact location of the treasure itself.) He flees and runs straight into Biggles and friends! After some adventures, Biggles agrees to fly Dick out to the island so they can all go treasure hunting.

Unfortunately, they are burdened with the doubloon, which the readers knows from the prologue is cursed. Literally everything goes wrong, starting with their attempt to take a taxi to a restaurant!

Once on the island, the pirate adventures truly begin. It's absolutely hilariously and amazingly piratical. It has EVERY pirate trope except a parrot (but it does have an albatross). Biggles is totally aware of how ridiculous it all is and throws himself into it with boyish enthusiasm, even giving everyone nicknames from Treasure Island.

It's completely delightful and an excellent example of writing different genres within the same series, and I would enthusiastically recommend it...

...but it does have a caveat, and it's a pretty big one. I'm sure by now you can guess what it is. The overall racism content is mostly in the mild-moderate range, and it's intermittent rather than pervasive, BUT it also includes several casual uses of the n-word. If I was reissuing this book I would remove them, and I wish someone had. I don't think even Johns would object, as judging by later books he appears to have met some actual Black people in the interim.

ETA: Apparently some editions DID remove it thank God. I am going to exchange my super-racist copy forthwith.

Re: the cover: Yes. I know.

"The skunk who sank my boat must have scoffed my beer."

I regret to inform you that the title refers to sleeping rough. As opposed to any other meaning that I cannot imagine Johns was unaware of because come on.

Biggles, Ginger, Bertie, and Algy go to investigate possible airplane-related crimes on a supposedly deserted Scottish island, and proceed to have ALL the Scottish island-related experiences you could possibly want to read about, like camping, foraging and hunting, creating a little home in an abandoned house, exploring a castle, chasing criminals around the moors, etc.

One of the most enjoyable things about the Biggles series is how varied the tone, mood, and even genre is across books. The WWI short story collections are both dark and zany, much like MASH in tone and incident. Biggles Flies East is a tense spy thriller. Biggles Flies South is batshit 30s pulp adventure a la H. Rider Haggard. Biggles Buries a Hatchet is a quite dark story with a very grim setting, in which not everyone can be saved but one man hits bottom and climbs up from there. Biggles Looks Back is a Ruritanian adventure that's also a sweet, wistful look at love that begins when you're very young and remains when you're all much older and living very different lives.

Biggles Takes It Rough is Johns' take on a specific type of children's adventure book, the one where kids camp out and play house and cook over little fires and solve a mystery. It has all the charm and atmosphere and humor of such stories.

Bertie particularly shines. Everything involving him is comedy gold. Early on, he's complaining about having nothing to eat but what they can hunt and forage: "I mean to say, wild duck with nothing else is going to be pretty tough chewing."

Biggles turned to him. "What do you expect with it - gravy?"

And then there's the running thread of Bertie and crustaceans. Here he's been startled by a criminal when he's just retrieved a large crab from a trap.

"Unless you're as daft as you look, you won't try giving me any of your lip."

What Bertie's answer to this, if any, would have been will never be known, for at this juncture the scene turned to comedy - at least as far as Bertie was concerned - when the crab took a hand. Literally. Bertie's hand. Bertie may have forgotten what he was holding. Or in his resentment at the way he was being questioned he may have become careless. At all events, the struggling crustacean managed to get a claw round one of his fingers.

His reaction was natural and instantaneous. With a yell he swung out the arm concerned to get rid as quickly as possible of the creature that had fastened itself to the extreme end of it. In this he succeeded. The crab, suddenly subjected to centrifugal force beyond its experience, was flung off the hand. It flew through the air and, although this was purely accidental as far as Bertie was concerned, would have hit his questioner in the face had the man not ducked and taken a quick step backwards. Anyone would have done the same thing. But the rocks, wet from the recent rain and slippery with seaweed, were not the place for sudden ill-considered movements. His feet skidded, and after a vain attempt to recover his balance he sat down with a squelch in a pool of water. The crab ended its short flight in the sea.

It's a funny incident, but the way Johns tells it makes it so much funnier. Centrifugal force beyond the crab's experience! The short flight of the crab!

A delightful entry in the series.

Post-Biggles Buries a Hatchet, Biggles gets a mysterious letter asking him to come to lunch. Who can it be from? He doesn't give out his address to anyone!

...anyone except, apparently, his favorite ex-spy, who skulks in wearing a fake beard and sunglasses for ~reasons~. I mean, he does have reasons, but there were ways to accomplish what he wanted without sending anonymous letters and wearing a fake beard. It seems pretty clear that von Stalhein missed Biggles and missed being a spy. They're on extremely friendly terms in this book, though not as intimate as they get later on.

Von Stalhein explains that notorious assassins have been spotted in his favorite German restaurant, and he thought Biggles should know. Relatedly, he's concerned about the Roths, the family of a German official he knew, who was recently executed in a purge; he had a wife and two children, who will certainly be killed if they don't manage to escape, but there's nothing von Stalhein can do to help them. Biggles proceeds to ignore all orders, entreaties, and naysaying from British intelligence in order to pursue the lead and protect the people von Stalhein wished could be protected.

Unusually, this book doesn't involve any piloting and all flying is done by getting tickets on commercial aircraft, which means there's a lot of action around dealing with customs, being picked up at the airport, spies buying tickets and following them onboard, etc. Biggles justifies this as "It isn't worthwhile [to fly myself]. I might as well let someone else do the work." But it causes them so much trouble that it absolutely would have been worthwhile to use their own planes. I think Johns just wanted to mix it up a bit.

Biggles flies straight to Berlin, fails to find the Roths, but does locate Anna, the fiancee of older son Moritz Roth, and takes her back to London. The rest of the plot proceeds as a thriller version of a comedy of errors, as everyone runs around searching for people and missing the people who are searching for them. There's some nice action but no spectacular set-pieces. The best bits are character moments, like Algy getting a little caretaking after he gets roughed up and the crew interacting with Anna.

At one point Anna has a letter sent to her father which might or might not contain useful information; she's hesitant to open and read it as that's clearly a thing that is not done. Biggles wants her to open it, and she'll do it if he outright tells her to, but he refuses to do so. He'll lay out for her why he thinks she should do it, but says it's ultimately her choice.

In such a huge and not always internally consistent series, one thing that comes up a lot is how insistent Biggles is on allowing people to make their own choices. He'll try to persuade them, but he won't force them. We see this with von Stalhein over a very long period of time. It even comes up very early on, when Biggles is a teenager and way less mature in many ways, he deals with a young pilot who panicked, fled a battle, and says he can't fight again. Rather than telling him he has to or to push through his fear, Biggles talks to him very kindly and says it's ultimately his choice.

The letter, when opened, does have important information but is also a very touching character moment.

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I was pleased to see a very sympathetic, non-stereotypical Jewish character in a small but key role; I strongly suspect that at some point before writing this book, Johns met an actual Jew. Relatedly, this book is extremely sympathetic to refugees and persecuted people in general.

Other than that, my favorite bit was von Stalhein in a fake beard, giving Biggles a tip like a cat presents its favorite person with a mouse. I wish we could have gotten the scene where von Stalhein meets up with the Roths. It happens but off-page, and I'm sure it's quite touching.

I recently obtained a set of random Biggles books via Etsy. There are others that look more objectively good, but I pounced on this one first as the back cover mentions that they are nearly eaten alive by ants. I immediately knew, via a misspent childhood in a country colonized by the British and so littered with elderly British pulp adventure novels, that this meant they would be staked out to be eaten alive by ants, possibly stripped naked and smeared with honey.

This book is sufficiently racist that I can't recommend it unless you really like batshit 1930s pulp (I do) or are willing to plow through or skim a lot to get to the good Biggles-specific bits. If you don't fall into either category, enjoy the "good parts" version here.

It starts off with a bang with this frontispiece. Click to see Ginger naked, yes really.

Biggles, Algy, and Ginger are hired by Kadar, a young Egyptian man, to help him find a lost oasis of archaeological significance. Kadar is a fun, likable character and about 90% non-stereotypical. He's not the problem. The problem is everything else, all the way down to a footnote explaining that "native tribes" commonly drink petrol. Uhhh I guess it's historically interesting to learn about a completely new stereotype? Anyway, they fly out in search of the oasis and promptly get stranded in the desert and attacked by everything but the palm trees.

I hereby reproduce my liveblogging, which gives you the experience of reading the book:

- The first two chapters take place in 500 BC. (As atmospheric setup, as the backstory for a treasure hunt.)

- Ginger chases a butterfly.

- Biggles just punched a bat.

- An ordinary bat, but part of an attack flock. They ran into the bats while fleeing an army of scorpions. Somewhere in there Ginger got sneered at by a crocodile.

- We've also had some presumed dead. This is not one of the better Biggles books but you can't say it lacks for incident.

- Now cobras are falling from the ceiling.

- As predicted, they have been spread-eagled and staked for the ants. Honey is involved. 🍯 🐜 🐜 🐜

- Here's Biggles when they've been staked for ants:

"Don't worry, you fellows," he said quietly. "It will soon be over."

No it won't, Biggles, the whole point of being eaten alive by ants is that it takes a long time!

- Biggles, Ginger, and Kadar are the ones staked for ants, while presuming Algy dead. Algy, who presumed them dead, comes to the rescue!

Algy reached Biggles first, and shuddered as he saw the broad, black line of ants hurrying towards him.

Biggles was far gone, but he managed to smile, and whisper, "Good boy."

I'M SORRY THE SLASH WRITES ITSELF. Though regrettably, they were staked out fully clothed and the honey was only smeared on the ground around them, as a lure.

- There is also some high-quality Algy whump. He wanders the desert desperately searching for the others while it's literally burning the soles of his feet!

- Biggles is hilariously grumpy in this book. He's in a bad mood for basically the entire thing. (I mean, understandable given the cobras and ants and all.) Kadar is a civilian archaeology enthusiast tagging along, which is really fun as he keeps forgetting they're in extreme danger and wandering off to enthuse about archaeological finds, to which Biggles responds by reminding him that they'll probably all die.

- I just hit the moat full of snakes.

- Ginger is sleeping with his head on Biggles' leg while Biggles sits and smokes a cigarette.

- Also someone was sacrificed to a crocodile.

- (They have now been separated from Biggles).

The absence of his dominating personality and cheerful optimism made their own position seem so much worse.

What cheerful optimism? Not in this book! Dominating personality... Well, there was that "Good boy."

- Guess who utters this immortal line? "Frizzle, you blighters, frizzle!"

- Okay, this book has possibly the single most spectacularly batshit climax of anything I have ever read.

I am going to excerpt parts of the climax below, but seriously, if there's any chance you'll actually read this book, it's so much more amazing if you encounter it yourself. Warning: involves cruelty to animals (IMO Biggles is a bit out of character at points in this book) but in a cartoony way.

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I used Dragon Dictate to dictate that bit so I wouldn't have to write it out, and it was very difficult as I kept cracking up. Ever since I read it, at least once a day I have remembered it and laughed out loud. I am certain that Johns chortled to himself as he wrote it.

Content notes: About 30% racism by weight. Violence. Somewhat graphic deaths of attacking animals.

I quite like this cover, which would make a good icon.



This cover better conveys the tone of the book.

Algy goes missing while investigating gold smuggling near the Terai, a jungle region between India and Nepal. By the time this is reported to Biggles, he's presumed dead. Biggles immediately takes Bertie with him to go find Algy--one way or another.

This is a very fun book, partly because of the unusual team-up of just Biggles and Bertie. Bertie is sweet, competent, and extremely self-deprecating, which made me wonder if it's his personality or a cultural norm for behavior if you're a Lord and with people who aren't, so you don't seem like you're LORDing it over them. There's a good mystery, a ton of India-Nepal border atmosphere, and lots of nice opportunities for Biggles to be comfortable in a place he knows well.

It is also astonishingly not very racist! That is, there is some of-the-time language, but there's a lot of Indian and Nepali characters, and they're all portrayed as just people: some heroic, some criminal, some ordinary. I particularly enjoyed the young aspiring pilot who tags along on their adventures and a matter-of-factly heroic Gurkha.

India here is very clearly not the India of The Boy Biggles. Time has moved on and language has changed - something acknowledged in the book itself.

Biggles and his crew are also noticeably older than they are in some of the earlier books. They don't age in real time, but they do age; in some of the later books, including this one, they're clearly middle-aged. One of the most striking scenes is when Biggles gets in a dogfight and realizes that it's been years since he's been in one. The other pilot has absolutely no chance against him because Biggles is an actual aerial combat veteran and his opponent seems to be just a guy doing crimes. Biggles tries to warn him, but of course that's not something you can really convey from an airplane...

I feel that it is not a spoiler to say that Algy is not in fact dead. But given that he's presumed dead for a lot of the book, I wished the characters were slightly less stiff upper lip about it. The first chapter in particular needed more quiet freaking out of the sort everyone else did when Biggles went missing in Biggles Fails To Return. I felt a bit angst-deprived, and also post-rescue comfort-deprived.

As a result, there are several Terai-based fics I would like to recommend:

Sunflowers, by sholio. Very touching post-rescue missing scene which also deals with the passage of time.

Fracture Reduction, by blackbentley. "Okay. You're fine. Good for you. But have you ever considered what this has been like for me?" Ginger asked. (Spoiler: Algy is not fine.)

Good Neighbors, by sholio. After the events of the book, Algy gets a visitor while the others are away.

"Do you realize that you've been intruding in what is acknowledged to be the most dangerous side of war? Believe me, had the men in that building known that you were there and were watching them, they would have - er - disposed of you without the slightest compunction."

"Oh, I realize all that," agreed Worrals. "What about it? Quite a lot of people are risking their lives in this war. Is there any reason why we should be exceptions?"

In this book, Worrals and Frecks of the WAAF get entangled in espionage, help out the French Resistance, and organize a spectacular rescue. This all comes about after Worrals notices a leaf stuck to the undercarriage of a plane, a leaf from a plant that doesn't grow anywhere the plane has supposedly been, and proceeds to make a Sherlock Holmes-worthy set of deductions and investigations. She pulls on a single thread, and all sorts of things come up with it. Accompanied by the loyal Frecks, Worrals pursues a spy, makes a dramatic forced landing, and ends up the official leader of an extremely dramatic rescue behind enemy lines.

There's about two pages' worth of Worrals being courted by fellow pilot Bill; Frecks threatens to bail out of the plane if such goings-on continue. Bill is fine - he particularly endeared himself to me by giving an exhausted and emotionally drained Worrals a much-needed packet of raisins, and assuring her that everyone collapses to some degree at the end of a mission - but Frecks is right there.

The series continues to blend very exciting adventure with atmospheric settings and fascinating little glimpses into ordinary life during WWII. Worrals and Frecks get trapped in a nightclub with the spy they're tailing when air raid sirens sound, and have to continue to dodge him inside; most people continue dancing. Why not? They're in the same amount of danger whether they dance or not.

You can download a free ebook at The Faded Page.

If you want a paper copy, there's a reprint edition available. Unfortunately, it's been given absolutely hideous new illustrations.

It's on! Biggles Holiday Airdrop

You can see the current requests here.

The tag set is still accepting nominations.

Biggles and Ginger are recruited to join the French Foreign Legion to help uncover a conspiracy which is recruiting pilots to desert and do nefarious things. He does so, giving himself the very impenetrable false name of... Biggs. Ginger Hebblethwaite's fake name is Hebble. Very clever, guys. I guess Algy and Bertie weren't in on this part because they'd be Lac and Lis, which was presumably vetoed as improbable.

This book has some really great bits but also a very big caveat. The wealthy globalist starting wars for money is named Julius Rothenberg W E JOHNS DID YOU HAVE TO? In a book where there are multiple references to Hitler and anyone working with him being the worst, too. Also, while there are definitely Johns books that are worse in terms in racism, this one has it sprinkled in throughout the entire book, and more than sprinkled in the last fourth or so.

That aside, I fucking love W E Johns' plotting. Every single book of his that I've read to date has a minimum of one excellent, unexpected, yet logical twist. I guess except for the ones where the twist is electric centipedes controlled by underground monks, which is.... well, for sure nobody expects monk-controlled electric centipedes!

There's a sequence in this book that exemplifies this sort of thing.

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SO ANYWAY, Biggles, Ginger, and von Stalhein end up besieged in an ancient stone fortress. This part is great. I think it's the only time in the series that Biggles and von Stalhein are forced to cooperate while they're still enemies, and it's terrific. They share their last cigarettes! They are deeply respectful of each other! We also get a bit that really encapsulates where they both are emotionally at this point in time:

Biggles: "So what does everyone think we should do now?"

Von Stalhein: "Let's have a suicide charge! We'll go out together in a blaze of glory, and take some of the enemy with us!"

Biggles: "...okay, you do you, but I'm going to eat dinner and go to sleep."