In When the Lion Feeds, the brothers Sean and Garrick Courtney share a competitive bond ruined early in the book when a shooting accident costs Garrick his leg and opens up a bitterness between them that consumes the rest of their lives. Garrick is the weaker, more studious brother, and the accident further sentences him to succeed in far lesser fashion than his guilt-ridden (but often thoughtless) brother Sean. Later they are caught up in the Zulu War—their father killed in the disastrous battle of Isandhlwana, Garrick managing almost accidental heroism in the defense of the hospital at Rorke’s Drift, and the gallant Sean believed killed but instead saved by Mbejane, his future footman and loyal Zulu servant/companion.

  The Courtney brothers emerge from the war as competitors in many ways: for the affections of a young woman, for the love of their mother, and eventually for ownership of the family holdings. Sean departs rather than fight his brother and heads into the bush with Mbejane. A brawler by nature, Sean meets Duff Charleywood during a fight and forms a fast friendship with the Englishman. Using skill, ingenuity, their fists, and occasionally guns, Sean and Duff manage to carve themselves huge fortunes on the Transvaal during the gold rush, becoming respected mine owners and feared speculators as the boomtown slowly evolves into Johannesburg. Betrayed in a stock swindle scheme gone awry, they’re driven into the wilderness nearly penniless, forced to turn to elephant hunting in a bid to rebuild. Duff’s sudden death nearly kills Sean, too, until he meets and falls for a young Boer woman. And the story’s not over—tragedy, love, hate, revenge, war, betrayal, all are played out on the vast African landscape.

  Wilbur Smith uses the imperfect Sean Courtney (and, in later books, both his descendants and ancestors) to tell many of the stories of his native Africa, not all of them tame, pretty, or what we would call politically correct. None of them is devoid of racial hatred, pride, and political machinations. Occasionally criticized for the racism displayed by many of his characters, Smith never flinches from portraying class distinctions, separations, and resentments among both white and black Africans toward each other and among themselves, presenting Africa as a troubled continent mired in its colonial past and its constant struggle to reach a better future. Smith usually balances his portrayals of black and white Africans by including admirable and despicable examples of both and often lecturing on the dignity of fellow humans who have more in common than they like to admit.

  Male characters in Smith’s novels usually display chauvinistic qualities, but are also undone by women who are often stronger—and smarter—than they appear. Sex and brutal violence always play a part, though mostly kept offstage or somewhat muted. An always concise use of strong visual detail displays the beauty and drama—and occasionally horror—of life in Africa. Even in the less sweeping books, Smith’s prose leads to a unique sense of place that elevates each novel. His wartime thrillers, such as Shout at the Devil (1968) and Cry Wolf (1976), recall the early work of Jack Higgins (Harry Patterson) crossed with the thrillers of fellow South African Desmond Bagley. Perhaps The Diamond Hunters (1971) and The Eye of the Tiger (1975) are, among Smith’s work, more representative of the contemporary thriller as we know it. Another, 1979’s Wild Justice (aka The Delta Decision) also deals with terrorism in more modern contexts.

  The resulting Wilbur Smith canon, as perfectly exemplified by the high-octane, machismo-fueled When the Lion Feeds, is a potent blend of thriller, historical fiction, and family saga. Whether dealing with the present or the past or, occasionally, both in the same work, Wilbur Smith has perfected the modern African adventure and kept it alive in the twenty-first century.

  W. D. Gagliani is the author of The Wolf’s Trap, a Bram Stoker Award nominee, and its sequel,Wolf’s Gambit, as well as numerous short stories in anthologies such as Robert Bloch’s Psychos, More Monsters from Memphis, Wicked Karnival Halloween Horror, Extremes 3: Terror on the High Seas, Extremes 4: Darkest Africa, The Black Spiral, The Asylum 2, The Midnighters Club, and others. With collaborator David Benton, he has also published fiction in Malpractice: An Anthology of Bedside Horror, Dark Passions: Hot Blood 13, and Masters of Unreality. His essays and book reviews have appeared in On Writing Horror, Cemetery Dance, Chizine, HorrorWorld, Hellnotes, Crimespree, BookPage, The Scream Factory, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and many others.

  57

  Evelyn Anthony’s

  THE RENDEZVOUS (1967)

  Sandra Brown

  Evelyn Anthony (1928–) is the pseudonym of Evelyn Ward Thomas. She first gained fame and commercial success with her exhaustively researched historical novels. In the 1960s, she switched to writing contemporary thrillers and spy novels featuring strong female leads, such as her famous series character, Davina Graham, the head of British spy services. Her books became known for their memorable protagonists and twist endings. Her 1971 novel,The Tamarind Seed, was adapted into a 1974 film starring Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif as lovers involved in Cold War intrigue. However, Anthony effortlessly adjusted to the end of the Cold War and wrote nearly a dozen thrillers set in the post-1990 world, including her most recent work, 2004’s No Resistance.

  “Count yourself lucky to read this new treat from Evelyn Anthony.” So said the Buffalo Courier-Express in 1973. I agree. If you haven’t read this British author, you’ve missed some excellent storytelling, suspense, and sexual tension.

  She began her career in 1949 by writing novels about historical figures,Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn, Victoria, Charles the King. But like her contemporaries Mary Stuart and Helen MacInnes, she gravitated to novels of suspense, espionage, and intrigue. These are what made me a devotee, an admirer, and, ultimately, a student.

  Because every work by Evelyn Anthony is noteworthy, it’s difficult to isolate a favorite. So I settled on three, which, in my opinion, are among the best of romantic suspense by this or any author: The Rendezvous, The Assassin, and Sleeping with the Enemy.

  The Rendezvous was published in 1967, roughly twenty years after the end of World War II. It opens at a cocktail party in a swank Park Avenue apartment in Manhattan. Chic, glittery, and glib people are making droll conversation. The only newcomer to this gathering is an architect of recent renown. Everyone is impressed by Karl Amstat’s urbanity, wit, and natural charm.

  But when his hostess pulls him aside and introduces him to her sister-in-law, Karl (aka Colonel Alfred Brunnerman) finds himself face to face with Terese Masson, a member of the French Resistance whom he had put through a grueling interrogation twenty years earlier when he was a Nazi SS officer.

  Oops.

  Lucky for him, Terese’s memory was wiped clean by the traumatic experience. Lucky for readers, they’re drawn into a tantalizing agony of suspense, waiting for the moment when Terese’s memory will return and she’ll recognize her new lover as the former SS officer. Even as their passion for each another escalates, so does the threat of Israeli operatives, whose mission is to find and kill war criminals.

  Bet you’re wondering how it’s going to end. Anthony holds you in suspense right up to the final paragraph.

  She was an adolescent during World War II, and that conflict influences much of her fiction. Nazis and their capacity for evil are frequent themes. In Sleeping with the Enemy, Louise, an American, is married to a Frenchman, Comte de Bernard. They live in his chateau in the village of St. Blaize, where the Germans have assembled a top-secret laboratory for the production of a lethal nerve gas that will ensure victory.

  The comte is a decent, peaceable man who wishes to protect his village from the worst ravages of the war. To that end, he maintains a civil relationship with the Germans and extends them his hospitality. Louise regards her husband’s cordiality as collaboration, causing disharmony in the household.

  Enter the American secret agent. Savage—don’t you just love it?— has been commissioned to find the nerve gas laboratory and destroy it, or die trying. He infiltrates the village, and therefore the Germans, by passing himself off as Louise’s Swiss cousin. So now, under the lichen-crusted, red tile roof of the chateau, you’ve got the wishy-washy French aristocrat, the odious German officer, the brash American, and the brave and beautiful Louise, whose loyalties are divided.

  Summarized like this, this situation sounds melodramatic. It isn’t. Especially the cruelty of the Nazis. To encourage the villagers to produce the Allied saboteur among them, the Germans inflict atrocities on the children of the village.

  Before the denouement, in order to achieve his mission, Savage must live up to his name. The comte realizes that passivism is no way to win a war. And Louise is forced to make difficult choices that will haunt her for the rest of her life.

  What one is willing to sacrifice for love is also a recurring theme in Evelyn Anthony’s writing.The Assassin is the story of an American heiress, Elizabeth Cameron, who is unwittingly drawn into a Communist plot to murder a politically outspoken Catholic cardinal. It begins with her granting what seems a small favor, and results with her having to aid and abet Keller, the professional hit man hired to commit the murder. As if that isn’t enough, her former lover is the CIA agent hot on the trail of the assassin.

  I hate when that happens.

  Now why would this cultured, well-educated heiress be willing to put her life on the line for Keller, who is uncouth and predatory? Because for all his brutality, Keller has honor. Elizabeth comes to trust him more than she does the so-called good guys.

  Which brings me to a trait found in all Evelyn Anthony’s books, the distinction that elevates them above others of the genre: the lines between good and evil are blurred. She creates delicious ambiguities. I ask myself, “Why am I rooting for SS Colonel Brunnerman as he’s trying to outrun the justice he deserves—death—for his heinous war crime?”

  Savage, in Sleeping with the Enemy, is a hero, but in order to carry out his mission he allows children to be torn from the arms of their parents and sent to Nazi death camps, sacrificing a few to save millions. Meanwhile, Louise, definitely the heroine, must seduce the German officer for the sake of Savage, the comte, and the Allied cause. And, while the German officer is a pig, his love for her is sincere.

  How can I, as a reader, feel anything but loathing for Keller, the assassin, when he accepts fifty thousand dollars for a hit, before even knowing or caring that his target is a beloved Cardinal? He seems so unprincipled. But once his background is revealed, isn’t his law-of-the-jungle mentality understandable?

  Reading Evelyn Anthony, I find myself in the same moral tug-of-war as her protagonists. Are evil and good totally distinct, or do they intersect? Her characters are forced to make a choice that violates the ideals and loyalties of their past and present. That decision will determine their future and possibly even the fate of the world. And, as in all nail-biting thrillers, their success depends on beating a ticking clock. In Anthony’s books, each tick reverberates.

  Evelyn Anthony made an enormous contribution to the genre of romantic suspense. Indeed, she helped create it.The Rendezvous, The Assassin, and Sleeping with the Enemy define it. These books resonate with the humanity of the characters. They teem with nuance. They are taut with sexual tension. Each tells an exciting story, but leaves the reader with more to think about than simply the plot. They’re realistic in that they don’t always end happily, but always satisfactorily.

  I’ve reread them for pleasure and for study. As a reader, I’m always entertained. As a writer, I’m continually inspired.

  Sandra Brown is the author of fifty-eight New York Times best sellers, twelve of which jumped onto the list in the number one to five spot. These include Smash Cut, Smoke Screen, Play Dirty, Ricochet, Chill Factor, White Hot, and Hello, Darkness. A lifelong Texan, she was born in Waco, grew up in Fort Worth, and attended Texas Christian University, majoring in English. Before embarking on her writing career in 1981, she worked as a model, a television weathercaster, and a feature reporter on the nationally syndicated program PM Magazine. Court TV also sought Brown to host the 2007 premier of its popular series,Murder by the Book. In 1992 her novel,French Silk, was made into an ABC-TV movie. She has seventy million copies of her books in print worldwide and has been translated into thirty-three languages. In 2008 she was named ThrillerMaster, the top award given by the International Thriller Writer’s organization.

  58

  Michael Crichton’s

  THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN (1969)

  Josh Conviser

  Michael Crichton (1942–2008) has become an institution. His name is shorthand for science, technology, fiction, and filmmaking. Many credit him with creating the “techno-thriller.” At the very least, he popularized the genre. While attending Harvard Medical School, he wrote thrillers to pay for his studies. One of them,A Case of Need, written under the pseudonym Jeffery Hudson, received a Mystery Writers of America best novel Edgar Award in 1969. That same year, Crichton published The Andromeda Strain under his own name and became a publishing phenomenon. His subsequent international bestsellers include Congo, Rising Sun, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, and State of Fear. He worked in multiple genres, including travel writing, historical fiction, and science fiction. He also made his mark in film and television, notably writing and directing Westworld, an influential movie about a theme-park robot that becomes homicidal, as well as creating ER, one of the most popular TV series of all time. Crichton’s work tackles complex technology and controversial political issues with a dramatic inventiveness that few can match.

  My name is Josh Conviser, and I’m an insomniac. For that I blame Michael Crichton—and I’m not alone. There’s a whole generation of readers who grew up on Crichton’s work. Through our formative years, we spent night after night lost in his books. As spokesman for that generation, I take it on myself to demand recompense for all those sleepless nights!

  Sure, Crichton opened our eyes to the wild possibilities of science, technology, world politics, history, and travel. I’ll give him that. Yes,The Andromeda Strain was the first real book I read for my own enjoyment. And, yes, I went on to read everything Crichton wrote, and then became a writer of techno-thrillers myself. But those all-nighters were brutal. I was young— I needed my rest!

  In preparation for writing this essay, I was “forced” to reread my wall of Crichton. The marathon only confirmed his mastery of the “what if.” What if dinosaurs could be reborn? What if we discovered a spaceship on the bottom of the ocean? What if historians could travel back in time? What if our analysis of global warming is wrong? Crichton’s dexterity with emerging technology opened these speculations to a broader audience. Indeed, he took speculative fiction out of the future and slammed it into our backyard. This shift is both at the root of his popularity and emblematic of the world in which we live.

  With the exponential rate of our scientific and technical progress, nearly any “what if” could happen right now and around the corner. Crichton’s work delves into that new reality. He opened our eyes to the beauty, majesty, and possibility of progress. He also revealed the pitfalls (psycho-logical, sociological, political, and apocalyptical) that may impede our path forward. In Crichton’s books, we see that what once lay in the realm of magic may now be occurring down the street. This reality offers tremendous possibility, forces hard decisions, and opens us to ever greater calamity.

  The Andromeda Strain was one of the first books to tackle this reality in popular fiction. In it, fact drives fiction, and science informs drama. The book uncovers worlds within worlds, peeling back layers of science, even as it drives the reader through the story. Its plot deals with a military satellite that inexplicably falls back to earth. In a matter of hours, nearly everyone in the vicinity of its crash point is dead. Only an infant and an old man survive. A team of scientists is called to a supersecret facility in the Nevada desert to study the satellite and survivors. They uncover the Andromeda Strain—a never before seen, and possibly extraterrestrial, biological agent that is causing the deaths. With humanity’s fate, and their own, on the line, we accompany the scientists through their discoveries, mistakes, achievements, and disasters as they deal with the threat. It’s science. It’s speculation. It’s a killer ride.

  The book appears to be a factual recounting of actual events. It melds false documents with a journalistic style to create fiction that sits flush with fact. Even the opening acknowledgments work to this end. In them, Crichton thanks the characters in his own story for their help in filling out its details (an example of metafiction worthy of Borges). He includes bogus but real-seeming graphs, diagrams, and interview transcriptions along with a three-page invented, but persuasive, bibliography.

  With the line between reality and possibility blurred, Crichton weaves a story that is both gripping and terrifying. Rereading the novel, I found it interesting to see how much of that possibility has become reality. Many threads of our modern tech-heavy life make their way into the book: voice-activated computer systems capable of complex analysis, satellite surveillance, and the hazmat outfits made popular in ET, among others. Today, the technology in The Andromeda Strain feels very comfortable. That it was written in the 1960s (before we landed on the moon) is amazing.

  After The Andromeda Stain, Crichton went on to many other successes—each book positing a wild “what if” that grows ever more plausible with each turn of the page. He had a two-pronged genius. First, he saw magical (and often frightening) possibilities in our world. He was then able to take these possibilities and fashion them into stories of gripping intensity, ripe with emotion. Many of his books are cautionary, warning us that as we drive forward, we need to be aware of the course we take. At the same time, he revealed to us the possibilities that lie on the cutting edge and beyond.