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Secret Army #3
Secret Army: The End of the Line
Secret Army : The End of the Line Brason, John
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 27, 2020
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.
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.
July 25, 2024
Very basic adaptation of the TV scripts. Perhaps a feature of the times it was written in that there is little attempt to flesh out the story or characters and is mostly a brief scene-by-description, rather than a ‘proper’ novel. Were all TV tie-ins like this? I don’t know, it was before my time!
Fascinatingly inconsistant writing. At times the text can be quite moving despite being very succinct-but maybe that’s because I’m recalling the actors and episodes as I read?
At other times the writing made me laugh out loud such as: “Pascal Keldermans recovered more slowly. He, too, survived without after effect. At least without physical effect. Everyone who survived that episode was mentally scarred.” 😂
Care to elaborate, Mr Brason? Or perhaps show rather than stating them in a single sentence and never referring to it again?!
We still learn next to nothing about our favourites. What about Monique and Natalie? Their families? Their lives before the war?
Some fun moments of trivia for die-hard Secret Army fans. The chef is called Pierre. Waiting staff are named Justine, her daughter Alice, and Sabine. (No reference to Genevieve, the waitress we see throughout the third season.)
We know from series 1 episode 15 that Albert used to be a taxi driver before he owned the Candide - here we learn he didn’t even own the car.
And finally we learn that Reinhardt was orphaned in the First World War, had an uncle, but now that uncle too has died. So that adds nicely to Reinhardt’s apathy. He had no one to live for.
Fascinatingly inconsistant writing. At times the text can be quite moving despite being very succinct-but maybe that’s because I’m recalling the actors and episodes as I read?
At other times the writing made me laugh out loud such as: “Pascal Keldermans recovered more slowly. He, too, survived without after effect. At least without physical effect. Everyone who survived that episode was mentally scarred.” 😂
Care to elaborate, Mr Brason? Or perhaps show rather than stating them in a single sentence and never referring to it again?!
We still learn next to nothing about our favourites. What about Monique and Natalie? Their families? Their lives before the war?
Some fun moments of trivia for die-hard Secret Army fans. The chef is called Pierre. Waiting staff are named Justine, her daughter Alice, and Sabine. (No reference to Genevieve, the waitress we see throughout the third season.)
We know from series 1 episode 15 that Albert used to be a taxi driver before he owned the Candide - here we learn he didn’t even own the car.
And finally we learn that Reinhardt was orphaned in the First World War, had an uncle, but now that uncle too has died. So that adds nicely to Reinhardt’s apathy. He had no one to live for.
September 12, 2016
Its based on the TV series, and has limtiations, because it is drawn from the scripts. But it conveys thte last few months of the war in Europe so well.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews