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Chandos #7
Red In The Morning
Set in France after the war amongst the beautiful landscapes of Biarritz, Pau and the Pyrenées, Yates’ favourite thriller hero Richard Chandos returns with Jonathan Mansel in a story of temptation, subterfuge, adventure and revenge. Regarded by many as Yates at the top of his form.
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1946
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About the author
Dornford Yates
60 books21 followersDornford Yates (real name Cecil William Mercer) was a popular British novelist.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 11, 2018
Okay, this book is hilarious. Apparently in the 1930s it was possible for members of the English gentry to strangle a burglar in France and leave his body for the police to find with neither guilt nor fear. The French police weren’t going to track them down and they were only ridding the earth of someone who shouldn’t be encumbering it - we know the burglar would be better dead because he kidnapped the narrator’s wife! After strangling one burglar, the protagonists can stage the death of a second as a suicide, again without either fear or guilt. Yates is priceless. I love reading his books; I suspect I would have loathed him.
December 6, 2024
Well, it’s a thriller, adventure book I would say. Not particularly exciting in my opinion
March 30, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in December 1998.
Red in the Morning is one of the Classic Thrillers series, though not written to as high a standard as Yates' Fire Below from the same series. Red in the Morning shows its age rather more, being very much "of its period". The characters are more stereotypical and less interesting, from the villainous Gedge to the upper class heroes. There is much casual chauvinism about the French (it is set in France) in the manner of the more offensive parts of Agatha Christie.
The two heroes, the friends Richard Chandos and Jonah Mansel interrupt and foil a robbery at the house of a friend of theirs. This robbery was organised by the gang chief Gedge, with whom Mansel has already clashed. Gedge is furious, and declares a war to the death against the two of them, which commences when he abducts Chandos' wife. The remainder of the novel details the battles between Gedge and his gang, holed up in a seemingly impregnable castle, and the two men. The castle belongs to Baron Horace, victim of Gedge's blackmail since the latter discovered that his image as an aricstocratic recluse was just a front for an international counterfeiting operation, and his neice, the beautiful Mona Lelong. Much of what happens is fairly predictable; Mona falls in love with Chandos (who is of course too honourable a married man to do anything about it) and defects to the opposition; amazing feats of physical derring-do enable Chandos and Mansel to attack the castle, avoiding the inevitable booby traps.
The two faults mentioned above, the casual chauvinism and the predictability, are the reasons this novel falls below the standard of Fire Below. Red in the Morning is still a gripping thriller by a master of the genre, even if not his best.
Red in the Morning is one of the Classic Thrillers series, though not written to as high a standard as Yates' Fire Below from the same series. Red in the Morning shows its age rather more, being very much "of its period". The characters are more stereotypical and less interesting, from the villainous Gedge to the upper class heroes. There is much casual chauvinism about the French (it is set in France) in the manner of the more offensive parts of Agatha Christie.
The two heroes, the friends Richard Chandos and Jonah Mansel interrupt and foil a robbery at the house of a friend of theirs. This robbery was organised by the gang chief Gedge, with whom Mansel has already clashed. Gedge is furious, and declares a war to the death against the two of them, which commences when he abducts Chandos' wife. The remainder of the novel details the battles between Gedge and his gang, holed up in a seemingly impregnable castle, and the two men. The castle belongs to Baron Horace, victim of Gedge's blackmail since the latter discovered that his image as an aricstocratic recluse was just a front for an international counterfeiting operation, and his neice, the beautiful Mona Lelong. Much of what happens is fairly predictable; Mona falls in love with Chandos (who is of course too honourable a married man to do anything about it) and defects to the opposition; amazing feats of physical derring-do enable Chandos and Mansel to attack the castle, avoiding the inevitable booby traps.
The two faults mentioned above, the casual chauvinism and the predictability, are the reasons this novel falls below the standard of Fire Below. Red in the Morning is still a gripping thriller by a master of the genre, even if not his best.
January 24, 2025
an excellent adventure story, beautiful landscape description, amusing, takes you back 100 years so very interesting.
April 20, 2017
1920s and 30s England, a place awash with stout chaps ready to pitch in and risk all in another chap's 'show'.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews