![]() ![]() Once the torture is over, he is dumped over a cliff, but, against the odds, he survives. He gets into the grounds of the great leader’s estate, and almost manages to get into the firing position, but is bagged by security. Here’s the plot: the narrator stalks a very important foreign politician, for what he keeps telling us is a private sporting challenge to himself. It’s really a novel about the impending threat to European civilisation by the apparently unstoppable forces of criminal fascism. Rogue Male is set before the Second World War, and was published only just before war broke out. ![]() This is a strange, anomalous novel, a one-off, though Household did write several other novels, with oddly familiar titles, like A Time to Kill and A Rough Shoot. The classic hunted man thriller by Geoffrey Household, Rogue Male (1939) is about a man hunted like an animal, so he must behave like one to survive. These thrillers are tough, but with good manners. These novels were written about men of a certain generation who understood the value of the gentleman’s club, and worked within its rules. ![]() This podcast for Why I Really Like This Book was for the miniseries on Thrillers for Gentlemen, looking at the kind of thriller or spy novel that was masculine without being brutal. ![]()
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