"Showdown", Errol Flynn

(resurrected from various old emails into some sort of coherence)

I obtained a copy of Errol Flynn's "Showdown" back in 2005 -- on loan at a charge of five pounds from the national collection in the British Library, with the threat of a minimum overdue fine of seventy pounds if not returned within three weeks or due date! He wasn't exactly an easy author to get hold of...

(Probably for sale for two dollars online via eBay!])

I was enchanted to discover, on opening the covers as I left the library, that the title page credits Flynn simply as "author of Beams End" [sic] -- clearly, the one achievement he really wants to be known for :-)

I read the first chapter; it's not bad. Opens with a German missionary travelling along the coast of New Guinea in a canoe. Bits of it are definitely good -- mainly those tinged with sardonic observation -- and others are clumsy, notably the transitions to a lot of the establishing flashbacks. Some of the necessary infodump fits in well, and some of it is a bit obviously engineered in by the author.

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