John Lawton (Author)
Encyclopedia
John Lawton is a producer/director in television, and an author of historical/crime/espionage novels set primarily in England during World War II and the Cold War.
Many of the Biography pages within Lawton's books have a decidedly tongue-in-cheek bent with hobbies listed as the 'cultivation of the onion and obscure varieties of potato', or 'growing leeks'. His author bio notes that "since 2000 he has lived in the high, wet hills of Derbyshire England, with frequent excursions into the high, dry hills of Arizona and Italy."
, becoming an investigator on the "murder squad". The rights to this character were purchased by Columbia Pictures
.
The series, in published order:
Another look at the Profumo Affair that so shocked the English, played this time as comedy, when a junior army officer is mistaken for someone
important, set up with a hooker and blackmailed. Reads very much like Lawton's homage to Graham Greene
Biography
Born in Washington in 1947, Lawton began his working life as a housepainter and gardener in the early 1960s. Settling in England he had a brief and unspectacular career in London publishing prior to becoming, by the mid 1980s, a documentary television producer at the newly-created Channel 4. In 1993 he settled in New York, and in 1995 won a WH Smith award for his third book Black Out[1]. He went back into television in England in 1997, and by 1999 had dropped off the TV and books map completely. He returned in 2001 with Riptide (American title: Bluffing Mr. Churchill), which was snapped up by Columbia Pictures. For most of the 21st century, so far, he has tended to be elusive and itinerant, residing in England, the USA and Italy. He appeared in New York, in 2008, with a reading in Greenwich Village.[2] Earlier the same year he was named in the Daily Telegraph (London) as one of '50 Crime Writers To Read Before You Die.' In October 2010 he read in Ottawa, Toronto, Portland and Seattle, ending up at the Mysterious Book Store in Tribeca, and later that year was named in the New York Times Review's 'Pick of the Year' for his novel 'A Lily of the Field'.Many of the Biography pages within Lawton's books have a decidedly tongue-in-cheek bent with hobbies listed as the 'cultivation of the onion and obscure varieties of potato', or 'growing leeks'. His author bio notes that "since 2000 he has lived in the high, wet hills of Derbyshire England, with frequent excursions into the high, dry hills of Arizona and Italy."
Frederick Troy novels
The novels in the Frederick Troy series share the eponymous protagonist Frederick (he doesn't like any form of his given name, preferring to be addressed by his surname) Troy, the younger son of a Russian immigrant father who's become a wealthy newspaper publisher and baronet. Defying class and family expectations, the independently wealthy Troy joins Scotland YardScotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
, becoming an investigator on the "murder squad". The rights to this character were purchased by Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
.
The series, in published order:
- Black Out (1995), ISBN 978-0670857678
- The story begins during the last stages of the London Blitz in 1944. Troy is assigned to find out who's murdering German scientists who've been secretly smuggled out of Germany and into Britain. Later, Troy tracks his suspect to Berlin in 1948, during the Berlin BlockadeBerlin BlockadeThe Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War and the first resulting in casualties. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under Allied...
. Along the way, he tangles with British and American spy agencies, a Russian spy and a British femme fatale.- Old Flames (1996), ISBN 978-0871138644
- Troy, because he speaks Russian, is assigned to guard Russian Secretary-General Nikita KhrushchevNikita KhrushchevNikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
, during his 1956 visit to Britain. Along with these duties, Troy investigates the death of an ex-navy diver during a curiously botched spy mission.- A Little White Death (1998), ISBN 978-0753822616
- The third Troy novel uses the historical events of the Profumo AffairProfumo AffairThe Profumo Affair was a 1963 British political scandal named after John Profumo, Secretary of State for War. His affair with Christine Keeler, the reputed mistress of an alleged Russian spy, followed by lying in the House of Commons when he was questioned about it, forced the resignation of...
and the Kim PhilbyKim PhilbyHarold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
spy scandal of the early 1960s as a jumping-off point for a fictionalised version in which Troy, now risen to Commander in Scotland Yard, discovers that an apparent suicide (of the fictional Stephen WardStephen WardStephen Thomas Ward was an osteopath and artist who became notorious as one of the central figures in the 1963 Profumo affair, a British public scandal which profoundly affected the ruling Conservative Party government...
-analog character) was really a murder. A second apparent suicide thickens the plot. Most of the historical characters get fictional equivalents, a few appear as themselves, and Christine KeelerChristine KeelerChristine Margaret Keeler is an English former model and showgirl. Her involvement with a British government minister discredited the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan in 1963, in what is known as the Profumo Affair....
becomes a pair of sisters. In the closing Historical Note, however, Lawton explains his historical inspirations and cautions that "This is not a roman à clefRoman à clefRoman à clef or roman à clé , French for "novel with a key", is a phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction...
." Concurrent with the scandal/spy/murder plot, Lawton interleaves some cultural history on the beginnings of 'swinging LondonSwinging LondonSwinging London is a catch-all term applied to the fashion and cultural scene that flourished in London, in the 1960s.It was a youth-oriented phenomenon that emphasised the new and modern. It was a period of optimism and hedonism, and a cultural revolution. One catalyst was the recovery of the...
'. The novel's title is a double entendreDouble entendreA double entendre or adianoeta is a figure of speech in which a spoken phrase is devised to be understood in either of two ways. Often the first meaning is straightforward, while the second meaning is less so: often risqué or ironic....
, referring both to the pills used in the second suspicious suicide and to Troy's life-and-career-threatening battle against tuberculosisTuberculosisTuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
.- Riptide (2001), ISBN 978-0297643456 (Published in the United States (2004) as Bluffing Mr. Churchill)
- Lawton backtracks chronologically to the early days of World War II, before Black Out.
- Blue Rondo (2005) (Published in the United States as Flesh Wounds, ISBN 978-0871136985)
- This book opens at almost exactly the same point as Black Out, and then skips ten years beyond the end of Black Out to pick up the lives of characters who are only children in the first novel. In 1959 two of them have grown up to be East End gangsters trying to move into the West End, and one has become a policeman working with Frederick Troy. There are some similarities to the historical story of the three Kray brothersKray twinsReginald "Reggie" Kray and his twin brother Ronald "Ronnie" Kray were the foremost perpetrators of organised crime in London's East End during the 1950s and 1960s...
, but Blue Rondo is set in a very different era and the author has, on occasion, warned against making too much of such anlaogy.- Second Violin (2007), ISBN 978-0297851967
- Another "prequel" to Black Out, this time back to 1938. The main protagonist this time is Frederick Troy's older brother Rod, working as a reporter for his father's newspaper. Rod travels to Vienna, just in time to witness KristallnachtKristallnachtKristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
. Returning to Britain, he is sent to an internment camp on the Isle of ManIsle of ManThe Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...
because of his Austrian birth and failure to pursue naturalisation. During the Battle of Britain, he is freed to become a fighter pilot. Meanwhile, brother Fred investigates the murders of several East End rabbis. The parallel stories eventually converge at the final denouement.- A Lily of the Field (2010), ISBN 978-0802119568
- This novel tells two linked stories, differing in tone and structure, but heading to the same conclusion. The first part, "Audacity", is set in the years 1934–46 in Europe, and has only the briefest mention of Frederick Troy. It is, essentially, the back-story to all that follows. The second part, "Austerity", set in London in 1948, is a more familiar Inspector Troy murder investigation, that, almost inevitably, spills over into Cold WarCold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
espionage.
Other fiction
- Sweet Sunday (2002) ISBN 978-0752842707
- "East of Suez, West of Charing Cross Road", included in Agents of Treachery (ed. Otto Penzler, NY June 2010) ISBN 978-0307477514
Another look at the Profumo Affair that so shocked the English, played this time as comedy, when a junior army officer is mistaken for someone
important, set up with a hooker and blackmailed. Reads very much like Lawton's homage to Graham Greene
Television
- A Walk up 5th Avenue
- Christians in Palestine
- Free and Fair
- 25th Anniversary of the Mersey Poets (with Brian Patten)
- Green Thoughts (with Gore Vidal)
- O Superman (with Harold Pinter)