The Devil's Oasis: A Novel
by Bartle Bull

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Book Review: Does its job remarkably well . . .
Summary: 4 Stars

On arrival in Cairo, Rider finds Gwen playing mistress to a slippery French archeologist and unwilling to reconcile with him because of his adventurous ways. Meanwhile his grown son, Wellington, and nearly grown son, Denby, are keen to sign up to fight the "Jerries" and "Eyeties" in the newly developing war, causing still another rift between Gwen and Anton. Their proper British friend, the somewhat incompetent Lord Adam Penfold, rounds out this little group which is again bound together by their common friendship with, and devotion to, the Goan dwarf Olivo Fonseca Alavedo, the very kinky and always scheming capitalist miser with the heart of gold who keeps them all in the chips despite their unworldly ways.

Olivio has his family of five beautiful daughters by his off-stage African wife (who, for some reason, never makes an appearance) and his one dwarf son (the spitting image of his dad . . . though why he is the only one to inherit dwarfism from papa Olivio while the girls are all perfect specimens is never addressed or explained). Their old friendly adversary, Ernst von Decken is there, too, high tailing it to Rommel in North Africa to salve the pain of having been on the losing side in East Africa during World War I. This time, relying on a peg leg to replace a foot he lost in the prior book, A CAFE ON THE NILE, he's quickly inducted into Rommel's inner circle and ready to beat the 'Englanders' at last.

Anton, of course, is keen to do his duty for a Britain he left as a lad of 18 and has not seen since, even as Wellington, born and raised in Africa, enlists to do his. Gwen, rather annoyed by it all, flees Cairo for Alexandria to do her duty there, caring for the wounded in the overcrowded hospitals, while Olivio has uncovered a secret on one of his landholdings that brings him into conflict with that certain French archeologist, as well as the Egyptian authorities.

While Anton and Wellington are off blasting Eyties and Jerries, Olivio must outwit the man who is out to steal what he has found and who will stop at nothing, including assassination, to get his way. As before, we are treated to a generous helping of sexual coupling, though it's less off-the-beaten-path this time than in the prior books, as Wellington falls for Olivio's surviving eldest daughter, Saffron, and Anton cavorts with Ernst's American wife who has paused to dally a bit in Egypt on her way home to the states in the wake of Ernst's desertion of her for the glories of a dreamed of German victory.

Anton leads his long range desert reconnaisance unit deep into Libyan territory, controlled by the Italians and Rommel, while Wellington takes his stand at a little known oasis on the road to Tobruk which Rommel must take if he's to move on and seize Alexandria and all the rest of the oil rich Middle East. There's lots of action and good fun for those who want to lose themselves in a 1940's style adventure set in the exotic locale of North Africa. Bull does a marvelous job of conjuring up that world though he is a little too specific in the technical details as he relentlessly lists the various vehicles arrayed on the two contending sides and has Penfold continue to read newspaper headlines aloud, seemingly ad infinitum, giving us the broader events of the day. Bull notes in his afterword that he did quite a bit of research in the old newspapers and, through Penfold, he seems keen to show us how much he took away.

The downside in this tale, though, remains the characters. While sharply drawn and generally interesting, they have no real depth and never seem to show any growth. Anton is still the heroic hunter cum adventurer, aphrodisiac to the ladies but a fish out of water with his own wife, Gwen. Lord Penfold is still the dull, impractical and sincere British aristocrat and Olivio is still the consumate manipulator. Ernst remains the somewhat honorable schemer and lout he has always been, despite the losses he has taken including the missing foot.

The Goan dwarf, Olivio, still takes his hits but, as always, knows how to hit back in a remarkably brutal way, though his brutality is surprisingly muted this time out compared to what we got in the first two books. Despite the deep losses he sustains in his battle of wits with his new enemy, he seems surprisingly unmoved by it all, thriving, rather, on the vengeance he is able to conceive and implement despite the loss of some of those who are closest to him. He's been blown up and nearly burned to death many times before, of course, and given the health problems Bull tells us beset him, it's hard to imagine that he's still alive, still scheming and still taking revenge on his enemies after all these years.

But this story is not meant to be realistic. It's a fantastic world of adventure masquerading as reality and in that it does its job. If you want to lose yourself in a fast paced tale set in a far off time and place, among strange and quaintly alien peoples, then this book is right up your alley.

I generally like my historical adventures set a bit further back in time, but as an author of one of these myself (THE KING OF VINLAND'S SAGA), I respect a good job when I see it. And Bartle Bull has written an adventure worth losing oneself in. I lost myself for a couple of days at least, reading it right through to the end without a break. And that's what it's all about after all.

SWM

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