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Niedermayer & Hart - Free on Kindle for Five Days Only!

28/3/2018

An actor friend once lovingly shared a story with me about the late Talfryn Thomas, who I personally only met on one occasion. Talfryn, with his protruding teeth, was unmistakably Welsh - a man of a thousand accents, all of them Welsh. Anyway, the friend explained how he’d met Talfryn on the tube after the latter had been for a BBC TV casting in White City. Talfryn was complaining about how the director had asked him to read the part several times and kept urging him to sound more English. Talfryn complained to my friend, “I kept doing it in my best standard English accent, and he still said I was too f***ing Welshy!”

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck, as they say.

What does this anecdote and the duck analogy have to do with Niedermayer & Hart? Basically, if you like ripping yarns that contain some horror/thriller and supernatural shenanigans, then you may well like this trilogy, its first part being Niedermayer & Hart. If, on the other hand, you’re the kind of reader who only really appreciates the classics, cosy detective thrillers, literary dystopian novels, books that contain long descriptive passages about sunsets over the Mediterranean, or you especially enjoy tales about characters called Jemima and Tarquin and their all-consuming angst about which farmhouse to purchase in Tuscany, then it’s almost certainly not for you!

Here’s a recent review that was posted on Amazon UK: “A real rip snorter of a page turner. I don't normally read anything other than Stephen King (I'm a bit of a King snob and generally find other Sci fi / horror authors don't quite meet the grade) but Johnson has written what I love to read. Looking forward to reading more of his books.”

For the next few days (from midnight 29 March - 2 April PDT), anyone can download a Kindle version of Niedermayer & Hart absolutely free. I have never done this sort of promotion before, but thought, as the next title in the trilogy will be ready shortly, it might be a good way of introducing new readers to the story.

To help you decide whether or not it’s your cup of tea, I’m posting here the prologue to Niedermayer & Hart in two different formats, so you have a choice - to read, or watch. If you opt to watch the video, simply scroll to the end of the text. The link to the free book is at the very bottom of this blog post, or simply click on one of the Amazon links to the right.

Enjoy.

Prologue - Niedermayer & Hart

Shortly before 2am, a white Ford van was moving at a modest speed along a virtually empty carriageway. It might have been any one of a thousand places on the motorway network. Occasionally a lorry caught up and overtook.
The boy passenger felt extremely irritated by the driver’s caution, at no time exceeding 55 mph.
‘At least he’s shut up though,’ thought the boy, referring to the driver, who in fact had not shut up, but sang along with every song that came on the radio.
The boy recalled the question and answer session he’d been subjected to after first hitching the ride. It had posed no problem; he was sure his rehearsed answers sounded convincing: he was seventeen, and going to spend a few weeks with an older brother in London. He’d even been able to say what his brother’s job was, his name and his girlfriend’s name. The boy had invented a whole history for himself.
He was in fact only fifteen, a runaway; the background he’d escaped from told in his eyes, there was a fixed aggression about his features and a world-weariness that spoke volumes. He reckoned on at least a couple more hours before they arrived in London, maybe longer at the sluggish speed they were travelling. ‘Perhaps it’ll work out well for me,’ he thought, ‘No point getting there in the middle of the night.’
From the van’s speakers the night-time DJ introduced, ‘That all-time favourite about the Windy City, inimitably sung by no other than Ol’ Blue Eyes.’
The boy sighed inwardly as the squatly-proportioned driver joined Frank with gusto.
Despite the man’s awful singing, the youth was finding it increasingly difficult to keep his eyelids open. He felt his head nod forward and jerked back into the seat. The driver’s vocal accompaniment sounded far off, as if at the end of a long and echoing tunnel.
The driver smiled as he caught sight of his passenger falling asleep and immediately turned the radio off, the abruptness of which startled the boy momentarily.
“I’m stopping at these services … need a rest and a bite to eat. What about you?”
“I’ll stay here if that’s okay,” replied the boy.
“No problem, I’ll be about an hour.”
As they came off the motorway and drew into the service area, the boy saw his all-singing all-driving companion more clearly as light spilled into the cab. The driver was in his late thirties. The boy reckoned he would be about the same height as himself when they were not seated, about 5’5”, except the driver appeared to be as broad as he was high. He wore a woollen cap that covered the top of his head all the way down his forehead to just above the eyebrows. The cap was either black or blue, the light was insufficient to distinguish which, although he could make out the man’s gingery hair, which sprouted in wiry curls about his ears and the back of his head, wherever the cap didn’t reach.
The driver put the van into a parking space. “Sure you don’t want anything?”
“No, I’m okay.”
The driver got out and began to walk away. The boy was about to close his eyes when he saw the driver in the wing mirror come to an abrupt stop and turn around, as if he’d forgotten something. He returned to the passenger door and opened it.
“I just thought,” he said amiably, “Look, get out and I’ll show you.”
“What?” the boy asked. The driver had already started walking to the back of the van. The boy released his safety belt and jumped down from the cab.
At the rear the driver had opened one of the double doors and had switched on a light, revealing the van’s interior. There were half a dozen boxes marked ‘Fragile’.
“What?” asked the boy.
The driver pointed to a mattress and some folded blankets that were piled on top of a box structure fitted across the width of the van at the driving cab end.
“You’ll sleep better there.”
The boy looked hesitant.
“It opens and locks from the inside,” the driver said, demonstrating the door’s locking mechanism, “You can get out if you need a pee,” he laughed.
The bed looked very appealing. The boy nodded and stepped into the van’s lit interior.
The driver immediately slammed the door and locked it with his key. He required nothing at the service area and went back to his cab.
He was about to start the engine when he felt the van shake. There was no sound. The van’s interior was completely soundproofed; it must have been quite an impact. Another rocking motion followed a few seconds after the first, followed after a short interval by a third.
“Very spirited,” the driver said.
Then with a contented smile he started the engine and pulled away.
He switched the radio back on.
© M J Johnson

Get a free Kindle copy of Niedermayer & Hart for five days only

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The Plot Thickens - Niedermayer & Hart

23/3/2018

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I seem to have been telling my readers for ages that the follow-on story to Niedermayer & Hart was almost ready. I wasn’t fibbing, honest! I started the proofing and fact-checking process well over a year ago, but a lot has been happening for me and my family (in the most part, I’m pleased to say, good things) which has somehow managed to slow everything in the Odd Dog Press publishing department down to almost a standstill at times.

However, we did recently manage to produce a newly updated version of my wife Judith Johnson’s book Southborough War Memorial, which lists the two-hundred and fifty-five names on our local war memorial. The original book was printed in 2009 and has been out of print for a number of years, although we did produce a Kindle version in 2012. The revised book contains some photographs and information not previously seen, as several names have been added to the memorial since 2009. Naturally, being a local history book, it was never expected to appeal widely or to sell in vast numbers, yet it continues to sell steadily, and not just in our local community but also within its far wider diaspora. This book took Judith seven years to research in her spare moments and remains, in my view, a very fine achievement. So, hooray for Southborough War Memorial I say!

To return to the subject of Niedermayer & Hart; the second book in the trilogy is at its final proofing stage. Actually, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever mentioned a trilogy. I concluded N & H with the words The End because I didn’t want to promise a trilogy at the time (although it was always my intention), just in case the book didn’t go down very well. Fortunately, most of its readers seem to approve. A reviewer said this about N & H last week on Amazon UK:
“A real rip snorter of a page turner. I don't normally read anything other than Stephen King (I'm a bit of a King snob and generally find other Sci fi / horror authors don't quite meet the grade) but Johnson has written what I love to read. Looking forward to reading more of his books.”

The cover artwork for the new title (soon to be announced) is being prepared at the moment. I’ve seen the rough drawings and find it suitably unsettling. Like Niedermayer & Hart and my psychological thriller Roadrage, the new book will not only appear in a printed format but also as an ebook. Actually, we’re also planning to bring out a new printed version of Niedermayer & Hart, if not simultaneously, then shortly afterwards. This is mainly because stocks of the original are running low and it’ll be good to have both titles conforming to the same style. An actor friend recently commented that they thought N & H would make a highly compelling film or TV series. If that ever happened, it would of course be terrific, but in the meantime, I’ll just keep on writing! Meanwhile, if you do happen to have an original copy, hang onto it, as the first edition will most probably go out of print sometime this year.

Oooh yes, almost forgot! I’m planning to do a series of promotions/giveways etc. over the coming weeks, so WATCH THIS SPACE, as they say!

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The Shape of Water

4/3/2018

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The wife and I rarely make visits to the cinema these days, mainly because we don’t find very much that we consider worth watching, it’s quite common for us to have torn the film to shreds before reaching the car park. Our local cinema, despite the fact that it operates ‘eight screens of magic’, generally only shows the most commercially successful offerings. I read Marvel comics as a teenager, and watched the original Star Wars in my early twenties, but don’t want to see these stories endlessly re-packaged again and again, and have become a little weary, not to say wary, of any more feel-good movies (save me, please!). The current state of the movie industry is I think what happens when money dictates the rules to creativity - the loser is always originality. Nor do I like the way in which the film industry has cynically increased the violence and bad language (in my view, they’d probably disagree, but then they would) in films graded as suitable for younger audiences.

When The Shape of Water was released I was unusually eager to see it. I’ve watched a number of Guillermo del Toro movies, and although I can’t say I’ve adored every single one, I certainly found them absorbing and often thought-provoking. I hadn’t read any of the reviews when I saw The Shape of Water, and still haven’t, so the views stated here are entirely my own. I did know however that The Shape of Water cost very little money to make by movie standards - probably less than some movie stars pick-up for headlining on a picture. From the pre-release blurb about the film I was led to expect something along the lines of a fifties Sci Fi B movie, cross-pollinated with some art-house touches. Yes, all these elements are there, however for myself, and for aforementioned wife, what came across most loud and clear to us was the film’s allegorical voice. I very much doubt whether this will become a ‘must-see’ film in the Trump White House, for it is a tale deeply ingrained with liberality and liberal values.

The story is set in Baltimore in 1962, at the height of the Cold War, presumably at a time before it was necessary to ‘Make America Great Again’. The central character, Eliza, played by Sally Hawkins, works as a cleaner along with her friend, Zelda, played by Octavia Spencer, at some kind of secret military establishment. All the main characters in this movie are outsiders, outcasts even; Eliza is mute and Zelda is a down-trodden black woman; Eliza’s friend and neighbour, Giles, played by Richard Jenkins, is a lonely gay man. Eliza, we glean, has a fascination for water, and when an amphibious man, played by Doug Jones, is brought to the secret establishment where she and Zelda work as cleaners, she is immediately fascinated and starts to communicate with him through sign-language. There is a strongly subversive undertone in this movie, with its authority figures, a secret-service man Richard Strickland, played by Michael Shannon, and General Hoyt, played by Nick Searcy, shown to be corrupt, sadistic and decadent. These two share a powerful scene with some excellent dialogue about the quality of ‘decency’. Even the (normally) bad guy, a Russian agent posing as a research scientist, demonstrates more humanity and understanding than these bastions of the establishment.

I don’t do spoilers, so I’ve said more than enough already. I liked this film and can honestly say that I enjoyed watching every frame of it. At a moment in time when the voice of reaction seems to be getting louder and society’s ‘outsiders’ are accorded little value, I am delighted to watch a film, albeit a fantasy, that favours difference and diversity. My previous blog was a review of Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny, who interviewed Franz Stangl in Dusseldorf prison shortly before his death; Stangl had been Kommandant of Treblinka, the Nazi death camp in Poland where approximately a milion ‘outsiders’ perished. As we came out of the cinema, Judith and I agreed that the Nazis would almost certainly have despised and banned this movie and labelled it decadent art.

So do please see it, if only to piss off a Nazi!

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Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny - From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder

1/3/2018

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This book, widely considered to be a classic, fully deserves this accolade in my view. However, it is difficult to use terms like classic or to write with any great enthusiasm about a book whose subject matter I wholly detest. Incidentally, it is possibly the only book, certainly the only book I recall, that I had to stop reading at bedtime, generally my main time for this daily practice, because it was giving me nightmares. I have little doubt that the author herself had the same reservations as the reader when she approached the subject matter, so it is with respect and admiration that I pen these words.

The facts about what the Nazis did, all of which can be obtained elsewhere, are not what makes reading this book so essential, nor is it some kind of horrific fascination in learning of the psychological profile of a man who oversaw the deaths of somewhere between 750,000 and 1,200,000 almost exclusively Jewish people (chilling when you think the estimated death toll - horrific whichever number is correct - might be out by nearly half a million!). Sereny doesn’t seem to be solely interested in Stangl’s psychology; I believe she was actually attempting to give us a glimpse, some insight, into the man’s soul. He initially trained as a weaver before joining the police force in his native Austria. There is some argument about whether as a policeman, Stangl was an ‘illegal Nazi’ - he himself always denied it, but his wife and colleagues seem to believe he was very likely a Nazi member before the Anschluss. There seems to have existed a powerful drive in Stangl, not only to be good and efficient at his job, but also to ‘be someone’. Were these the character traits the Nazis looked for when they sought to enlist the ‘right’ man, at first to be an administrator at Hartheim where the Nazis began killing those who were physically and mentally impaired, then Sobibor extermination camp, and finally to run what was essentially a human abbatoir at Treblinka? There is nothing to suggest that Stangl was a sadistic monster; there were a number of such types at Treblinka, as testified to by the very few slave prisoners who survived the camp, but there is no evidence to implicate Stangl in personal acts of cruelty; he was it seems a loyal husband and loving father. Yet, he was also the man in charge of this highly-efficient conveyor-belt that delivered death on a previously unprecedented scale.

It is hard to imagine the efficiency of the extermination programme. Every morning trains would roll into Treblinka station, which had been mocked-up to look like a real train station with flower boxes and a fake painted station clock with hands that never moved (Stangl’s idea) to lull the new arrivals into a sense of calm - they probably imagined upon seeing it, that nothing bad was going to happen to them, that they were simply going to be processed and then assigned some work. They were divided according to gender, asked to strip naked but told to keep their valuables and papers with them (again creating a false sense of security), they were then led into the ‘shower block’, where they were subsequently gassed with monoxide provided by diesel engines. The elderly and infirm were taken to the hospital - an entirely fake building complete with a red cross. Here they were ordered to strip, told to sit on a wall above a constantly burning pit, and shot. Two hours, and every single human being who had arrived on the morning transports was dead. Generally, by midday, all the killing was done, the remainder of the day was then dedicated to the disposal of corpses in open-air crematoria known as ‘roasts’. At least, this was the scenario for days delivering only western Jews to Treblinka; those arriving from the east in cattle trucks were herded viciously by sadistic guards who beat and whipped them into hysteria and ferociously drove them like animals through their final terror-stricken hours. One can only assume this difference in treatment was part of some sick Nazi ideology, whereby German Jews had, at the very least, been subjected to the improving influence of western civilisation, and were therefore far superior to those from the uncivilised east.

Franz Stangl, Kommandant of Treblinka, was, I believe, the only Nazi in charge of such an institution to be interviewed in this way. It therefore stands as a unique record. Sereny interviewed him for a total of seventy hours between April 2 and June 27, 1971, in Dusseldorf prison. He died only nineteen hours after her final interview. To the very last Stangl maintained, “My conscience is clear about what I did, myself ... I have never intentionally hurt anyone, myself.”

Sereny however, who was, after all, there in the room with Stangl, suggests that something had fundamentally changed in him during the course of the interviews:

For the first time, in all these many days, I had given him no help. There was no more time. He gripped the table with both hands as if he was holding on to it. “But I was there,” he said then, in a curiously dry tone of resignation. These few sentences had taken almost half an hour to pronounce. “So yes,” he said finally, very quietly, “In reality I share the guilt ... my guilt ... only now in these talks ... now that I have talked about it all for the first time ...” he stopped.

He had pronounced the words “my guilt”: but more than the words, the finality of it was in the sagging of his body, and on his face.

After more than a minute he started again, a half-hearted attempt, in a dull voice. “My guilt,” he said, “is that I am still here. That is my guilt.”

Whilst I was reading this book, I attended the funeral of a friend, and couldn’t help imagining, as I looked at the fifty-odd people standing there at the graveside, that every morning at Treblinka, at least a hundred times that number had perished. The effort involved in disposing of that many corpses simply stuns my mental faculties. Yet, for me, it is not good enough to consign this episode to the past and to label those who took part as evil men with a heavy line drawn underneath; if we fail to let the mistakes of the past guide us, we shall forever be in danger of repeating them. When politicians start to whip up division and hatred; when corporate employees allow themselves to carry out the wishes of their boards of directors at the expense, life and livelihood of the poor and disenfranchised, or allow misinformation to masquerade as the truth; then we must all be very careful. Moral integrity, it seems, can so easily be compromised

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Niedermayer & Hart - Free on Kindle for Five Days Only!

The Plot Thickens - Niedermayer & Hart

The Shape of Water

Into That Darkness by Gitta Sereny - From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder

M J Johnson

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