(Literary Up is my new umbrella title for daily reviews of books, audiobooks and comic books here at www.scribblers.us)
Rogue Male
A cultured, suspenseful, lovingly labored reading of Geoffrey Household’s classic thriller Rogue Male can be heard this week on BBC Radio 4 Extra. This 1939 tale of political activism, tireless pursuit, sudden violent transgressions—and lots of anxious downtime—is one of my favorite novels ever.
Like its game-hunter hero, you can’t kill this book with a stick. Beside this reading, Rogue Male has been a film, a TV movie, a 90-minute radio play and an episode of the show Suspense. All are recommended.
The daily broadcast is now several chapters into the book, which has been divided into 15 episodes. BBC Radio 4 keeps shows online for a week following their first broadcast, so if you start listening today you can still catch episodes 7-12.
By Episode 8, we’re well past the hunter hero’s opening assault on the unspecified yet highly Hitlerian despotic world leader. A certain small town murder has also happened. We’re now into my favorite bit, where the protagonist literally goes underground, living in a self-styled rabbit hole, barely keeping ahead of his predators.
Michael Jayston has just the right haughty tone for this adventure. Household’s hero. (The character is never named in the book, though Fritz Lang’s 1941 film version Man Hunt calls him Alan Thorndyke. The star of the 1976 BBC TV version, Peter O’Toole, is credited simply as “Hunter”). The hunter has a self-confidence and air of superiority that would be insufferable were his exploits (told in the first person) not so worth bragging about. Jayston’s delivery maintains that cultured air. He’s never breathless or wild. He’s telling you, calmly and clearly, about that rather interesting time when he was on the run for attempting to assassinate a world leader.
Jayston’s heard as a “station voice” at BBC Essex besides his book readings, also recited a radio version of Household’s Rogue Justice, the years-later sequel to Rogue Male, which first aired in 2009.