{"id":2176,"date":"2021-03-24T16:26:13","date_gmt":"2021-03-24T15:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=2176"},"modified":"2021-03-24T16:26:13","modified_gmt":"2021-03-24T15:26:13","slug":"review-rogue-justice-by-geoffrey-household","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/review-rogue-justice-by-geoffrey-household\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Rogue Justice by Geoffrey Household"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Geoffrey Household&#8217;s novel <em>Rogue Male<\/em>, written on the eve of the Second World War, told the story of a British big game hunter who decided on his own to shoot and kill an un-named European dictator.  The book, considered a classic of the genre, was made into a Hollywood film directed by Fritz Lang, and in the film the dictator is clearly Hitler, as Household intended from the start.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Several decades later, Household wrote the sequel, <em>Rogue Justice<\/em>.   Upon learning of this book&#8217;s existence, I was keen to read it.  <em>Rogue Male<\/em> and the film both ended without us really knowing the fate of the protagonist &#8212; or Hitler for that matter.  In the intervening years, Household was recruited to the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), which did have a plan to kill Hitler not unlike the one Household described, and he spent some time in German-allied Romania and elsewhere.  His experience there clearly provides the background to this story, set about three years after the events in <em>Rogue Male.<\/em>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But what a disappointment this book turned out to be.  It is a long account of a long journey from Germany to a nunnery in the heart of Africa, via Auschwitz, Poland, Romania, Istanbul, Greece, Italian-occupied Albania, Palestine and Egypt.  Not much actually happens.  The protagonist &#8212; now named &#8212; is on the run.  He kills some people.  And that&#8217;s pretty much the whole story.  <em>Rogue Male<\/em> should have been left as it was, a masterpiece of the genre, without this sequel which was, frankly, a boring read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Geoffrey Household&#8217;s novel Rogue Male, written on the eve of the Second World War, told the story of a British big game hunter who decided on his own to shoot and kill an un-named European&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2178,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176\/revisions\/2178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}