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Waterstones in Hull are extremely supportive of Hull & East Riding writers, and carry
a stock of many of the books mentioned on this site.
Ex seafarer and lecturer Leslie Wilkie has lived and
worked in countries of the South Pacific Region and the Middle East. He has written several novels and short story collections.
His most recent book is called 'Pallister's Phoenix'.
'The Golden Gnome'
If you want
to judge “The Golden Gnome” by its cover, I wouldn’t start with its puzzlingly-chosen,
if apropos, title (suggestive of an ersatz Monty Python spoof), but rather with the photo of a palm-treed beach surrounded
by a lapping ocean on the front, and a commentary on the back that describes the author as having travelled the world for
most of his life as a Radio Officer.
The minute
you open the book it is obvious that the youngish seafaring private eye, Terry Jagger, only rummages around the East Riding
long enough to find himself a willing client to commission him to sail off in search of treasure and adventure, and if that
client turns out to be the attractive heiress Jennifer Beddows (sweet-natured, compliant, trusting and old-fashioned) who
elects to hold his hand romantically along the way, so much the better.
So there
he is, skimming the balmy Southern Seas, a young beauty at his side (the woman), and another underneath him (the yacht), revelling
in a mystery that contains a pocketful of precious gems, a golden Russian chess piece (the eponymous gnome), secret bank accounts
stuffed with goodies scattered around the world, an atoll that does not appear on any map, and the grave of someone no-one
has ever heard of. OK, Jim, it’s “Treasure Island” with more sex and less pirates.
….which, in Leslie Wilkie’s gentle, intelligent, literate prose style is all very pleasant, and a marvellous holiday away from heavier tomes. Lie back and luxuriate in the fantasy. But what are these, Jim – storm clouds?
Three-quarters way through the book its mood changes into something very much more powerful and affecting, strongly reminiscent of York writer Tricia Walker’s excellent “Benedict’s Brother”. Both books are concerned with a bequest and a journey to research into the life of a deceased relative out in the Far East, a quest tainted with family tragedy. Both books leave your soul engagingly touched.
However, at the end of “The Golden Gnome” one mystery still remains. Is the hero, Terry Jagger, really a thirty-four year old, craggy-faced Adonis, or rather a slightly lecherous 45 year old plus sea dog masquerading as one? Ah well, maybe we will learn more in the sequel, and I, for one, will be looking out for it. (TR).
'Pallister's Phoenix'
This is the third book I have read by Leslie Wilkie and
I have to say that I could probably carry on slotting his books into my life forever. They are quirky and slyly wilful, and
once I have picked one up I cannot rest until I have finished it, not because I am overtly driven on by either the plot or
the characters, but the writing is so conversational that it is almost like sitting there talking with him late one night
in a cosy hotel bar nursing a warming brandy.
‘Pallister’s Phoenix’ is about five men surviving the sinking of a trawler and the devastation of the Hull fishing industry as a whole. According to the plot, the Phoenix sank when it picked up a live mine in its trawl which proceeded to blow up both the boat and most of the crew. Ron Pallister was the deck hand on the Phoenix whose life was saved by four of his shipmates while he lay unconscious on a life raft, where they each lent him a piece of clothing to keep him warm and alive. Decades later, Ron wins the lottery and wants to thank them for their good deeds that day by helping them out financially should they need it, hiring private detective Alan Craven to track them down wherever he may find them.
So what did the trawlermen do for an occupation once there were no boats left sailing out of Hull? In my brother’s case he briefly joined a herring fleet operating off the South Coast of England but never found a truly satisfying job again. In the case of Ron’s shipmates here, they more often than not did a tour of duty in Australasia for a spell and made do with various alternative nautical pursuits as they came across them, legal or illegal. In all cases the outcomes proved somewhat downbeat.
I wouldn’t usually expect to recognise a 114 page novella as having been organically plotted, but somehow Leslie has managed to write one. I suppose that I am so used to the rigorous snakes and ladders no-loose-ends plots of commercial crime fiction that something whose structure is seemingly inspired by a jazz combo jamming session puzzles and seduces me in turn. The book is delivered in terse, concise, precise phrases (rather as the legendary Lord Denning used to deliver his judgments) which are interspersed with entertaining but decidedly tangential impromptu solos. These lengthy asides and serendipities are no doubt much more reflective of the real life of a professional investigator than neat, polished narratives, but they do have me scratching my head while thanking God that there is somebody around here who chooses not to obey the rules.
And that
is probably why I will always want to read a new Leslie Wilkie book. They are quietly enjoyable, determinedly different and
very Yorkshire somehow. (TR).
'The Kokoda Connection'
"I liked the way the story takes place over two
different time zones and involves so many different lives. In particular I enjoyed the description of places like those in
Papua New Guinea- I really felt like I was there. The twist in the tail of the story was very clever and very unexpected,
I had built myself up for a sad ending but was hoping for a happy one but the way it happened was not what I thought would
happen."
'The Felicity Factor'
Alan Craven makes the transition from college lecturer
to international investigator purely by chance and in so doing encounters shipwreck, maritime piracy, murder, kidnap and romance.
During a bizarre encounter on the North York Moors he volunteers to search for a missing woman, a woman he has known since
childhood. The trail leads initially to Spain then on to Gibraltar and Malta. The story then moves on to New Zealand and Papua
New Guinea before finally coming to an end back in Gibraltar.
'Trade Winds'
An amalgam of Wilkie's two short story collections - "A Sailor's Song" and "The Melody Lingers On" which currently have to be bought separately it seems (click on titles to go to Amazon.co.uk).
In Leslie Wilkie’s novel ‘The Golden Gnome’ there were passages where you could almost feel the balmy Southern Seas streaming through your fingers as the boat scooted between the islands. Much of ‘Trade Winds’ is also structured around sea adventures but more as tales from the officers’ mess recalling incidents netted from professional working lives spent crossing the oceans of the world. You can easily imagine these yarns being traded around a table laden with drinks and fag packets as old sea dogs civilly while away their hours in each others’ sociable company.
Leslie was one such sea dog, or at least sea sparks, and the stories sound authentic even if they are predominantly fictitious. Many of them feature benign tricks of fate where good deeds or mere accident result in sudden windfalls of cash, romance or similarly unexpected pleasures. I don’t know if anything like this has ever happened to Leslie himself but it is a recurrent theme in both his short stories and his novels.
I have to confess that I am no great fan of short stories. I view them as being a bit like fairy cakes sitting in their rows on a baking tray – each one short of a fully-satisfying mouthful and yet containing far too much sugar. Every few pages you are confronted with new strangers, each with their own back-stories, leading inexorably to a carefully crafted ending with a cherry on top. While Leslie’s stories here last on average less than four pages, they are seamlessly and sometimes movingly told; they also provide a glimpse into the life of a jobbing mariner, so I’ll pass them off as petits fours instead.
To give a few examples, in ‘Lady Clare’ a man comes across a ship that has been impounded in a Cretian harbour for human trafficking which he used to work on as a trawlerman many years previously; in ‘The Dinosaur’, a Second Officer insists on maintaining traditional working practices in the face of modern technology, being vindicated when a tsunami ravages the ship; in ‘Goodbye Gloria, Hello Ben’, an over-egged cruise bus belonging to an African potentate comes to much the fate you might expect when being transferred ashore; and in ‘Follow The Brolly’, a man treating himself to an economy cruise finds himself on the wrong boat comforted in his confusion by a rich young divorcee.
If you
pick up ‘Trade Winds’ on a Friday night and finish it on the Sunday afternoon, you will not have cracked
the theory of relativity in the meantime but you will have spent a pleasantly relaxing weekend, with time for a spot of gardening
and a leisurely Sunday lunch as well. (Tim Roux).
Lesle Wilkie contributed 15 of these.
And also:
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