The nameless narrator of this foul but energetic vengeance memoir fondly recalls his churning hatred of Nazis, those glorious times 30+ years ago when he was hurtling about the French moonlight, giving Nazis piano-wire neckties and blades up the rectum, all the while muttering in outrage at the swinish dead. Kirkus Reviews, however, which writes pre-publication reviews for the publishing industry and libraries, was mostly horrified by the book: He uses his book as a not very subtle tract to condemn the system.'

O'Brine's loathing for Nazi Germany, the ubermenschen and all they represented. is well-written and is an exciting adventure story. The New York Times, nevertheless, did give a favorable review to his last book: O'Brine's three previous novels had enjoyed a certain amount of critical success, but he was far from being a well-known writer of spy fiction. He is headed for a small sailboat in which he will try to reach the British sanctuary of Gibraltar-since the book begins many years later with the hero's reflections as he visits the over-grown site of one of his early training camps, we know that he does indeed successfully evade the German forces who have been scouring France for him. The last we see of him, he has urinated into a large soup pot in a restaurant's kitchen, a soup that will be used to feed German officers. In the final pages he makes his way south over a period of weeks to Marseille, garroting or otherwise killing dozens of German troops as he proceeds. Grim and totally with humor, the rest of the book is a straightforward narrative of his brutal and merciless attacks against German targets, his eventual capture by the Gestapo in Paris, the ghastly tortures he undergoes at their hands, and his escape from their heavily guarded prison.

It is narrated by a nameless hero of Italian birth and more than one nationality, who joins the British undercover services in the early days of the War, impelled primarily by a single-minded, overriding desire to kill Germans.Īfter months of arduous training in all parts of the British Isles, he is parachuted into the French countryside to take up the leadership of a band of a Resistance fighters. Martin's Press in the United States, apparently the same year that O'Brine died. The last of his 11 books about secret agents and their murderous struggles with Nazis both during and after World War II, it was published by Futura in England and by St. Pale Moon Rising is a 1977 novel by Manning O'Brine.

The pale moon was rising abve