That's Me in the Middle

I am enjoying the Bandy Papers series. Like the first volume, I found That's Me In The Middle a bit variable but never less than enjoyable and exceptionally good in places.

Bandy spends the first half of the book as Top Brass in London, giving Jack an opportunity for some well aimed potshots at official incompetence and infighting, treacherous politicians and so on. There is also the usual smattering of pure farce and Bandy's endearingly hopeless social and romantic escapades. This part is well written and amusing but nothing that special, I think. It's very Wodehousian, with some episodes very reminiscent of Sir Roderick Spode and Edwin the Boy Scout, but it didn't really engage me.

As before, it is when Bandy returns to the fighting, with Jack's brilliant balance of humour and the terror of war, that the book really excels. He manages to make the narrative both funny and exciting, and captures both the chaotic nature of the combat and its genuine horror. It reminded me a little in tone of the excellent TV drama The Wipers Times and these passages, making up most of the second half of the book, had me completely riveted.

Parts of this are quite outstanding - and if you have more of a taste for farce than I do, you will enjoy all of it very much. I will certainly be reading Volume Three (It's Me Again), and I can recommend this one.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

This is the second book in the series and I enjoyed it just as much as the first book, A mixture of black humour and laugh out loud humour as the tale of World War 1 continues - some of the tales were so funny I had to stop reading as my eyes were watering. Thoroughly recommended.

I thought the first book in this series was a great read, but its sequel has outdone it! How Donald Jack manages to wring laughs out of the awful mess that was WWI without in the least trivialising its horrors is a literary miracle. What to compare it with? Blackadder and Flashman jump to mind. Traces of PG Wodehouse and, perhaps, faint echoes of Caryl Brahms and Skid Simon's mordant tales of Vladimir Stroganoff's company of Russian exiles may also be detected therein. That said, Jack is his own man and Bartholomew Bandy is a wonderfully original creation. I read this at one sitting and went to bed a happy insomniac at 4:00 am. The description of Bandy's wedding night has to be an all-time comic classic. I can't wait till the third volume in the series comes out. Very, very highly recommended.

A most interesting and entertaining story that involves spies, Irish rebels, political skulduggery, love and marriage, brisk action and hilarious events that beggars belief. Having been posted back to a training squadron Bandy is given rapid promotion to acting colonel which some what goes to his head to the disgust of his friends. However his new political masters require him to do a dirty deed by providing him with data so as to make a political speech to back stab the Army C in C. This misfires and he is immediately demoted to Lieutenant and posted to join the Bicycle corps fighting a rear guard action in the battle of Amiens. After distinguishing himself in action he is recalled home, driving himself back in an abandoned RR silver ghost that he acquires during the retreat. He is re promoted to Major and rejoins the air force now the RAF. On home leave he finds time to get wed. How his new wife and friends manage to get him into the nuptial bed and overcome his ingrained prudish inhibitions results in a series of hilarious incidents. Fortunately once he gets the bit between his teeth there is no holding him back resulting with his wife having to suffer a lack of sleep.