HEADING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
Set in the early 1950s in the Surrey town of Reigate, Follow My Leader is the story of two friends, Rowena Furse and Erika von Turpitz and their relationship with their mysterious elderly neighbour Mr Morrell, a German refugee. On the surface there is nothing about Morrell that makes him worthy of anyone’s attention. He is horribly flatulent, has bad breath, a non-descript face, horrible teeth, “piercing blue eyes, partially obscured behind a pair of steel rimmed glasses”, and a love of German opera, especially those written by Richard Wagner! In fact, it is opera that rouses his interest in Rowena after he hears her singing to a recording of Tristan and Isolde while tidying her garden. She eventually introduces him to Erica and it’s when the trio are in the garden knocking back gin and tonics that the normally teetotal Mr Morell makes an astonishing confession, which Erica initially dismisses as “plain bonkers”. Is Morrell telling the truth about who he claims he is? Where did he come from? How did he end up in Reigate sharing a house with his equally mysterious friend Yardley, and more to the point, what is he up to?
Follow My Leader is a novel that grabs the attention because of its easy, accessible style and a tightly-structured plot that moves at a controlled steady pace. Much of its charm lies in the fact that it is set in a neat, quaint post-war English country town where nothing much appears to happen…except in Erica’s bedroom! Tall, blonde, middle aged, with the looks of a film star, Erica is hot stuff and she knows it! This is a woman who takes no prisoners as we discover in Chapter 2 when, after a slightly drunken dinner date, she seduces widower, retired soldier and former man of action Colonel Peregrine Maxwell. Disappointingly, he falls short between the sheets or as Erica scathingly remarks “Not exactly the longest campaign you’ve waged in your career.” No wonder she calls on the services of Freddie, her faithful odd job man, to finish what Maxwell failed to complete to her satisfaction! In contrast Rowena is the epitome of English suburban common sense. Happily married with a lovely garden to keep her occupied she is friendly, generous and decent, the sort of woman incapable of having an unkind word to say about anyone. What Rowena also has is integrity and in post-war Britain it would have taken that plus a fair bit of courage to openly befriend a foreigner, especially a German woman! Although Erica lives in a community where her beauty cuts an obvious dash, there is an underlying sense she is not completely accepted. Her cultural roots are occasionally referenced, albeit with the caveat that she is “different” to other Germans because she is “not quite like them”.
The hypocrisy is obvious yet Erica rises above it having survived more than her fair share of sleights and setbacks. As long as she has her friendship with Rowena and a good supply of alcohol, cigarettes and handsome lovers to fall back on, Erica is as happy as a cat with a bowl of cream.
The two friends are drawn into an extraordinary adventure that gains extra traction when a young journalist is murdered and his good-looking older brother, also a newspaperman, hits the trail to unmask the killer. What sustains the plot, apart from the quality of the writing, are the action shifts and deliberate ambiguities. Nothing is quite what it seems in the genteel folds of English rural suburbia, not even Rowena’s amiable husband, who she wrongly assumes is a pen pushing civil servant counting the days to his retirement. And while Reigate is the main activity backdrop, Hughes briefly moves the action further afield to the Canary Islands where the dusty roads, heat-soaked landscape, and a remote white washed villa are the scene of a brutal murder and epic escape.
Follow My Leader is an enjoyable caper with all the right ingredients for a good read: there’s sex, murder, intrigue and a bit of espionage thrown in for good measure, all of which is set up from the beginning with an excellent prologue. A literary agent once told me that writers should be wary of prologues as they don’t always work. It’s a fair point. I’ve read quite a few books with prologues that added nothing to the story, leaving me to wonder why they were used in the first place! Hughes succeeds because his prologue is not only relevant but it blends in with the overall narrative structure. He did it with Spitfire Spies, which took him at least twenty years to write, and it’s good to see him repeating the formula with Follow My Leader. Hughes has taken an intriguing idea and worked it into an engrossing, humorous adventure with memorable characters and some interesting plot twists.
Reviewed by Juliette Foster
Why not add How to Steal a Piano and Other Stories, Living with Jo and Spitfire Spies to your John Hughes collection? Click on the covers to find out more about these books.
