Talbot MundyBesprekingen

A very creditable book, Talbot Mundy's Om: The Secret of Ahbor Valley is nevertheless hard to quantify. An inspiration for James Hilton's Lost Horizon, which was released nearly a decade later and is one of my favourite novels, Om follows the improbably-named protagonist Cottswold Ommony in British India in the 1920s, as he sets out to discover a mystical hidden valley and learn its secrets, not least that of the 'Jade of Ahbor' gemstone, of which he has encountered a stolen fragment. Throughout this story, Mundy laces his narrative heavily with spiritual and philosophical digressions, all of which are robust and a rung deeper than your usual East-meets-West mysticism.

Om exists in two worlds, and this shifting foundation is perhaps why I found it difficult to love, for all its qualities. It recalls Kim, a novel I did not like, but while it has one hand in the past in echoing Kipling's story, it also reaches out to the future, not only in suggesting the path which Hilton would later follow in Lost Horizon, but acknowledging the challenges of the coming years. "The men of the West are studying the construction of the atom, and have guessed at the force imprisoned in it," Mundy writes here, in 1924, more than two decades before Hiroshima. "Wait until they have learned how to explode the atom, and then see what they will do to one another" (pg. 363). Adventure stories rarely have this depth of wisdom, this metaphysical underpinning, and Mundy's is a genuine depth. Each chapter begins, Dune-like, with excerpts from a fictional Lama's book of teachings, and Mundy's professed following of Theosophy finds great airing through the characters' dialogue throughout. Many won't like philosophy mixed in with their fiction-reading, but for thoughtful and intelligent readers there is much to ponder here and the ideas are a fine complement to the story.

However, while the philosophical side is sound, the adventure story itself is found wanting. Mundy's characterisation of Ommony lacks the inner spiritual wanderlust which made Hilton's later protagonist Conway so relatable (even though 'Ommony' is surely meant to hint at 'Om', the meditative word). The underlying mystery of how Ommony's sister went missing in the Ahbor valley some years earlier is poorly-seeded and almost an after-thought. Characters leave the story when they are no longer convenient, rather than when their arcs are completed. After a promising start, with action, intrigue and exotic mystery, the story starts to drag: rather than heading out on a ripping adventure, Ommony becomes part of a kind of travelling circus which puts on a transcendental play in the villages it passes. The reader's interest fizzles out and when we finally arrive at our mystical valley of Ahbor, we've been off the tracks for so long we've forgotten why we were headed there.

The scene in which Ommony and his companions trek through to the hidden city, and the lost valley opens up before us, is a fine one, but in truth the exciting ingredients of a lost city and a powerful treasure are undersold. We are told that the natives of Ahbor "guard the valley as cobras guard ancient ruins" (pg. 367), but they are never really encountered in the story. Much of the threat, peril and excitement is informed second-hand through the characters' dialogue with one another, rather than being exampled in the narrative. A character explains the magical value of the Ahbors' jade gemstone, but we never see its effects in the story. The intelligence and depth underneath is often wise ("men fight to the death over the Golden Rule [of the Sermon on the Mount]," one character says on page 365, "What would they not do with the Jade of Ahbor?") but the story overlaying it is thin and stretched. It's to Mundy's great credit that he didn't rely on cheap thrills but instead utilised (and, in some ways, subverted) the adventure-story format to deliver a deeper, more satisfying message: there are adventurers and treasure-hunters of "the sort who hunt miracles and seek to make themselves superior by short-cuts. Whereas there are no short-cuts, and there is no superiority of the sort they crave, but only a gradual increase of responsibility, which is attained by earned self-mastery" (pg. 389). I am happy to follow a good author like Mundy, eschewing short-cuts; I only wish there had been a little more payoff on the adventure itself.

Adventurev November 10 and December 10, 1921

This book is a fast-moving adventure tale based on the fascination that the Orient has long held for certain Westerners. Much as in science fiction, the Indian subcontinent serves as another world, where the everyday customs and assumptions of the Anglo-Saxon world don’t necessarily apply.
The Nine Unknown of the title is a mysterious group hidden from public sight. Each is entrusted with preserving an aspect of powerful ancient wisdom. They are known to each other, but each recruits a set of nine followers who know only their leader, not the other members of the Nine. On the same principle, each of these followers replicates a group of nine, forming a pyramid throughout the Indian subcontinent to protect the mysteries.
In keeping with that premise, this tale isn’t told from the perspective of the Nine, but that of a disparate group of adventurers on their trail. This group has been sent to Father Cyprian, an eighty-year-old Catholic priest for whom all such mysteries smack of the occult and thus should be destroyed. Accordingly, he has devoted his life to collecting the secret books containing the arcane knowledge of the Nine. Whoever possessed the complete set would have all power, but Cyprian—like a latter-day Savonarola—intends to incinerate them.
Mundy supplies few details of the ancient wisdom, apart from anticipating splitting the atom (not bad for a book published in 1923).
The freebooters were recruited by an investor in New York. He is named in chapter one but plays no further role in the book, leaving me to wonder why the author bothered to give him a name, even if it is the delightful moniker Meldrum Strange. The men he recruits have little interest in books. Instead, they have signed on for the gold that the Nine are alleged to have hoarded. Four are Westerners, Three are local, and in keeping with the author’s Orientalist fascination, they are more colorfully depicted than the Westerners. One is a Pathan, a fierce warrior from the Afghan hills (accompanied by seven sons from seven different women). Another is a fastidious and murderous Sikh. The third is an overweight, comically loquacious Hindu. He is named in chapter one as the source from whom the anonymous narrator heard the tale. The significance of that detail and the remark that his accuracy is frequently questionable set up a great payoff in the final chapter (nope, not gonna say more).
The search for the Nine Unknown is complicated by the existence of a parallel group structured in the same way. They, too, seek the knowledge of the Nine, but to use it for their own dark purposes in the service of the destructive goddess Kali.
The way the adventurers come into contact with the Nine is a delightful plot twist. In my limited understanding, a principle of Asian martial arts is to use the energy of your adversary to accomplish your own aims. Here, too, I will say no more.
Mundy includes some philosophy and local color, but these elements are subordinated to the action. I wish I’d read more books like this when I was young. But it’s not bad that I can discover them now that I’m old and have more time to read for pleasure.

Odd collection of theosophic writings and poems. Some are fairly profound, some verge on gibberish.½

Athelstan King is a British Secret Agent stationed in India at the beginning of WWI. He is attached to the Khyber Rifles regiment as a cover, but his real job is to prevent a holy war. "To stop a holy war single-handed would be rather like stopping the wind--possibly easy enough, if one knew the way." King is ordered to work with a mysterious and powerful Eastern woman, Yasmini. Can King afford to trust her? Can he afford not to?

Talbot Mundy (real name: William Lancaster Gribbon) was born in England but moved to the US and became a naturalized citizen. He was a fantasy/adventure writer of the H. Rider Haggard / Sax Rohmer / Robert E. Howard school. He wrote two novel series – “Jimgrim” and “Tros of Samothrace” and a number of stand-alone novels and stories. The “Jimgrim” books feature the American adventurer James Schuyler Grim and a coterie of friends and allies: Captain Athelstan King of the Khyber Rifles, Cotswold Ommany, Jeff Ramsden, the babu Chullunder Ghose, the Sikh Narayan Singh, and miscellaneous other Europeans or natives as the plot demanded. Most of the JimGrim stories are set in India under the Raj and are of the “white savior” variety, with Jimgrim leading his band into various adventures, often involving some sort of mystical enemy – Hindu hypnotists, Thug assassins, Tibetan devil worshipers, etc. The Tros novels are set in late Roman republic – Julius Caesar is a personal enemy of Tros – and the action shifts from Britain to Gaul to Egypt to Italy. There’s nothing overtly supernatural in them, although Tros has reportedly taken part in various Greek “mysteries” and the Britons he meets have the talents – second sight, for example – attributed to Celts.

I’ve read six Tros novels (Tros, Helma, Avenging Liafil, Helene, Queen Cleopatra, Caesar Dies; these were collected short stories so the number and title of the novels depends on the publisher) and three Jimgrim (Om, the Secret of Ahbor Valley, The Nine Unknown and The Devils Guard). The Tros novels, originally published in the 1920s and 30s, enjoyed some resurgence when heroic fantasy became popular with J.R.R. Tolkien. The Jimgrim novels are a little harder to find; I pick them up as they appear in used bookstores (I know I could order them all from Amazon, but what’s the fun in that?)

Mundy seems to have been pretty unpleasant in his early life; he was a self-confessed womanizer, a bankrupt, and an ivory hunter. He also consistently exaggerated his own adventures, claiming to have fought in the Second Boer War and to have met ivory hunter Frederick Selous – although it can be proved that he didn’t. Later in life he became religious – first Christian Science, then Theosophy.

Mundy has a somewhat more favorable view toward natives than other writers of the time; for example his babu, Chullunder Ghose, shows a lot of the stereotypes – he’s bombastic, pudgy, and proud of his English, and a self-confessed coward. But he’s also intelligent, loyal, resourceful, and just as brave as the rest of the Jimgrim crew when bravery is necessary. The novels are entertaining enough and I’m looking forward to gradually tracking down the rest of them.

Jimgrim all but disappears in this particular book in the series. It's Jeff Ramsden all the way through. And all the way through takes the reader from New York and Boston to West Virginia and, finally, a showdown at Lake Tahoe, on the other side of the continent. Looted archeological treasure is the spur for the story. That, and a worldwide plot by black Africans to take over the world. The book is worth reading for no other reason than its black revolutionary reading of Moses and the Exodus.

Otherwise, Mundy has once more turned to a novel of mere action and no thought, although you might see some schisms within the practitioners of Theosophy reflected in the plot. Mundy wrote this story in 1922 and joined the Theosophical Society in 1923.

Ultimately, the story makes you long for the return of Jimgrim and the setting of the Middle East.

A somewhat average Jimgrim story that nevertheless entertains and satisfies the spirit of adventure. Once again set in Palestine after World War I, this novel finds Jimgrim unearthing a conspiracy among corrupt British officers, greedy Arab opportunists, and nationalist zealots to create conditions that would launch the Muslim world into war against the British across the Empire. Mundy's heroes, in this case, are the British officers at the top, honorable Sikhs, and wrongly accused subalterns. Somehow, it all works. As usual Mundy successfully brings out much more characterization than anyone has a right to expect from pulp magazine adventure stories. And he does it through both dialogue and introspective passages.

Mundy's first Yasmini adventure is quite short, easily finished in one sitting. It's also an unfocused effort, with a stuffy British colonel, an over eager British captain, a sly native officer, and an exotic seductress from "the north." Its villain is a simple outlaw. Of these characters, the two most interesting are the colonel, Stapleton, and Yasmini the seductress.

A Soldier and a Gentleman intends to introduce Yasmini. Beautiful and treacherous, in later volumes we find her pictured as a golden-haired woman of mixed racial ancestry. Indian, part Russian, and perhaps partly from the peoples inhabiting the Caucuses. Lithe and strong, she is a match for any man, physically and intellectually. A few decades later and she would have been featured in American hard-boiled detective fiction as a femme fatale. In Mundy's world, where he first imagined her right before World War I, she is a figure unique for her deviousness and physical threats.

Colonel Stapleton, however, is another matter. He is not a love interest for Yasmini. To the extent there is one in this novel, that role goes to Captain Boileau. But Stapleton is "the Gentleman" to which the title refers. And his values, firmly fixed in the Victorian era, are not so effective in the year 1914. In fact, there is a bit of Colonel Blimp in him. Blimp would later come to personify outdated, reactionary elements of fossilized imperial military incompetence, unsuited for the twentieth century. Colonel Stapleton gets a jump on him, allowing his courtly manners and actions almost to make possible the escape of the murderous outlaw, Gopi Lall.

Had I read this novel first, I'm not sure I would have pursued the series. But I read King of the Khyber Rifles right before. It is a much more detailed and nuanced work, with far better characterizations and even ideas to explore. There isn't much of that in A Soldier and a Gentleman. At best, it is pure adventure magazine material, which, not coincidentally, is where it first appeared.

For the first six Jimgrim stories, the action is set in Palestine. The seventh book takes place in Syria. For this, the eighth in the series, Cairo and the Pyramids are center stage. Much changes in the series with this story. First, Jimgrim himself moves slightly off center stage to be replaced by Ramsden, for this is Ramsden's story and it shows. It is much more violent and driven by intuition. Heretofore, the Jimgrim novels have been notable for Jimgrim's lack of violence. Yes, there were battles and showdowns and people getting killed. But the plots turned on Jimgrim's patience and his ability to sniff the air and get people to acknowledge the value of enlightened self interest--the idea that all would prosper, if the interests of each individual was protected along with the common good.

Clearly, that is not the case with A Secret Society. It's almost as if Mundy's editors at Adventure magazine told him to shake things up and get some blood on the page. And so he does. There is even a gun battle within the interior of the Great Pyramid itself. Meanwhile, a worldwide society of criminals must be faced down and derailed from their plot to enter the United States and embrace the American financial system within their web. Before there was James Bond, there was Jimgrim and Ramsden.

There is not nearly as much thought in this story as in the earlier novels. Maybe no thought whatsoever. But perhaps Mundy's readership in Adventure were getting antsy, and he needed to toss them a bone.

In this third in the series of Jimgrim novels, Mundy limits his setting to the city of Hebron. He also reintroduces Jimgrim's fellow American adventurer, Ramsden, back into the series after his absence from the second book. And it makes a difference. With Ramsden included, Mundy's books tend to be much more introspective and even analytical. In this case, the analysis is given over to the psychology of mobs and their victims, especially smaller groups of victims. It is quite interesting to watch it all play out. Ramsden clearly brings an intellectual edge to things. He observes, participate, and scrutinizes. Meanwhile, there is also plenty of intrigue, plotting, and action.

A somewhat mixed adventure story, King of the Khyber Rifles fails at its aspirations towards poetic imagery and the mundane philosophic bromides taken from the worst excesses of Theosophy. On the other hand, Mundy is clever with the turn of a phrase, the working of words, and often contradictory thoughts of his characters. It is a wonderful period piece, a glimpse of a vulnerable British Raj at the beginning of the Great War. And it plots out itself in a fashion that maintains interest, although the Great Reveal of the novel is clear from the moment King meets with the Rangar in Delhi.

There are better adventure writers. Some such as Haggard were actually more experimental with teasing out an element of Darwinian Naturalism as well as Realism in their writing. (And, of course, Mundy all but steals directly from Haggard's She in one of his plot elements, here.) Kipling was much more the master of the lyrical than Mundy. Give him his due, nonetheless, Mundy and his mix of 19th century mannerisms under assault by a new age of machine guns in war on one hand and old style Victorian spiritualism on the other, makes for a worthy read. There is an almost tangible feel of its times in its pages.

Better than average adventure novel is The Winds of the World. What really sets it apart is the skill of Mundy in writing dialog. It enhances the multiple perspectives from which the story is told. And, for the first time, I came to appreciate his use of comic language, especially as it applies to the poor babu.

The story itself is a pastiche, with everything falling into place in the penultimate chapter. One nagging thing, this book and the first three of the Yasmini series were written during the opening phases of the Great War. And Mundy clearly had little idea of how things quickly bogged down into trench warfare on the Western Front. His closing image of a romantic cavalry charge in contrast to the meat grinder that was the real world reality seems very much out of order, today.

On the other hand, the character of Yasmini undergoes yet more change, fuller development. Here, she is something of a cross between Mata Hari and a woodland sprite. Deadly, smart, and devious but charming, flirtatious, and full of gay energy.

Talbot Mundy and the Yasmini series get better as they go along. This fifth in the series looks back to Yasmini's manipulative origins, previewing the delightful and formidable adversary she would become. But the novel also demonstrates her loyalty and friendship--to the right people. Otherwise, it's India as you imagined it under the British Raj. Or at least the Raj as it should have been.

Guns of the Gods fills its pages with colorful, detailed imagery and a dashing retelling of action and adventure. But there is more than that. There is the sheer enjoyment of Mundy's writing, here. He wields irony like a rapier, making for some of most memorable passages in adventure literature. Just one from this novel will live on above all others: Akbar the rum-loving elephant and his run through the night after men and beasts, both those real and imagined.

Finally, Mundy achieves something else with the Yasmini series and this book in particular. He creates a wistful mood for a place few would have experienced and none today can visit. That feeling lingers into the characters themselves, especially in the way Mundy describes the parting at the end between Yasmini and Tess.

Fun to read.

With Caves of Terror, Talbot Mundy brings a rather dissatisfying end to the Yasmini series. Athelstan King is back once again to renew his complicated rivalry with Yasmini, who, however, disappears for most of the book. Instead, King and his American associate are caught in a labyrinth of caverns underneath a secret Hindu sect's temple. There, they find many wondrous and fearful things and must work to keep them out of Yasmini's hands, as she aspires to worldwide domination.

If this seems all action and no thought, it is. If this seems more like pulp fiction for teenage boys, it is. If this seems too programmed and exploitive of the other books in the series, yes, it is. But at least Akbar the temperamental elephant returns to the series to turn over carts, scare people, and charge automobiles. Maybe Mundy should have written an Akbar series?

Few writers in the adventure genre are as good as Talbot Mundy at setting the stage for the action to come. This is especially true in his first novel, Rung Ho!. It's an exceptional work in many ways. For not only does it place itself firmly within the tradition of adventure writing in the first half of the last century, but it also achieves some subtle character development, especially with Mohammed Gunga and Alwa. True, this all collapses towards the book's end, especially after leaving Alwa's desert eyrie, into cliched figures manning the battlements of pure action. But what action it is!

Yet, as indicated, it's the atmosphere of India, set against the Indian Mutiny of 1857, that is so enjoyable in Rung Ho!. Mundy has a talent for establishing a sense of place and, in this case, a sense of time. He travels through two veils, so to speak. This is the Raj of the pre automobile and pre airplane era. Even the railway has yet to make an impact on the subcontinent. It is a world of stone palaces, timber and earthen huts, carved out caverns, all reached only on horseback or in carts and carriages. This landscape withers under a blistering sun along the day and chills its inhabitants during clear nights punctuated with starlight.

And Mundy achieves this effect without projecting his values of pre World War I America and Europe into the middle of the nineteenth century. What he does do, however, is emphasize those values that were common to both eras. Hence, Mundy writes a story that turns on the concepts of honor and the worthiness of one person's word given to another. It culminates in satisfying action and serves as a parable for following a moral course of action.

Jim Schuyler Grim is an American working for the British Secret Service in the aftermath of World War I in the Middle East. Accompanied by another American, Ramsden, an amateur adventurer, they explore a world of political intrigue, terrorist plots, and Palestinian archaeological wonders in Jimgrim and Allah's Peace. This is one of Mundy's better works, his storytelling works quickly and he fleshes out characters in surprisingly sharp detail.

But the thing most to remember from the book is the imagery of Jerusalem. Mundy can make it magical, as Ramsden walks through starlit city at night, hearing, seeing, and feeling its ancient past in the narrow streets and passages surrounding him. Then, during the day, it can all turn into a squalid, dangerous, oppressive city of stone, with hidden warrens and chaotic souks, promising adventure as much as death.

Not to be forgotten, too, is Mundy's bent for following in the path of Cervantes and Don Quixote. His dialogue is peppered with the comic and witty, while serving as critical commentary on contemporary politics and social attitudes. Like Cervantes, he also makes use of digressions that often seem to lead off from the main story into separate tales. They nonetheless eventually wind their way back to the main plot and have served in the meantime to create context, atmosphere, and character.

An average story by Talbot Mundy. All the ingredients are there for success, but it somehow never rises above the expected. As usual, Mundy creates great atmosphere, giving a tangible feel to Palestine and Syria right after the Great War. And he employs his usual powerful dialogue, replete with passages of comedy and ironic wit. Too, it's a rare story, a tale of intrigue surrounding the fate of King Feisul (Faisal I) as he is ushered out of Syria during the French takeover of the region. In fact, I'm not sure that I know of but one other representation of these particular historical events in popular entertainment. And that would be the 1951 film, Sirocco, with Humphrey Bogart, Lee J. Cobb, and Märta Torén, which actually takes place just a few years later than The King in Check, during the Syrian uprising of 1924.

Rebellion, disorder, and perhaps even war threaten the hinterlands of post World War I Palestine. Once more Jimgrim and Ramsden are sent on a mission to avert trouble. In this fourth book in the Jimgrim series, Talbot Mundy devotes quite a lot of time to Arab lore, in particular the folkways and legends of the Bedouin. His intent is sympathetic, although he does indulge in more than a few stereotypes. At the end, however, the reader is left with an appealing montage of camels carrying men and treasure across magical moonlit nights in Araby. It may not always ring true--and probably fits Edward Said's description of the sort of excesses of Orientalism that critic tried to right--but it makes for an evocative setting and an appealing adventure story.

At first glance, this fifth in the series of Jimgrim adventure novels appears as simply a continuation of the fourth in the series, The Lion of Petra. But it's not. Neither is The Woman Ayisha very much about the woman, Ayisha. Whereas The Lion of Petra concerned itself with Bedouin lore and the imagery of the desert, The Woman Ayisha is all about Jimgrim. In fact, it is almost a psychoanalysis of Jimgrim. All done through the voice of Jimgrim's partner in adventure, Ramsden.

Now, Mundy is no Joseph Conrad. (And this is not to disparage Mundy, who is quite a good writer and storyteller.) But in this work, in particular, Mundy is coming very near thematically and culturally to the issues that often obsessed Conrad--colonialism and the psychology of displaced men. Jimgrim, it seems to me, comes awfully close in motivation and the pursuit of redemption to none other than Lord Jim. It doesn't matter if one book appeared as a major work of modernism and the psychological novel, while the other dwelt on the pages of a pulp magazine. Although note that Conrad, too, appeared on the pages of mass literature magazines, such as The Smart Set, McClure's, and Munsey's. Even the storytelling device is similar: Lord Jim's Marlow both narrates Jim's story and participates in it. Just as does Ramsden in Ayisha--and many other Jimgrim tales.

Quite simply, Jimgrim becomes both a figure of insight into the character of Western man in battle with himself in a culture and climate in which he does not belong and a depiction of modern mystery. The mystery being the most interesting, of course. For as Ramsden notes, Jimgrim could be anything, a millionaire financier, a general of armies, a politician of force. But, as with Conrad's Jim, he is driven by idealism. And although it is not revealed (at least not yet as I read through the Jimgrim series), there is the sense that something has scarred Jimgrim's naivete in the past. The name itself should be enough of a clue. If this is the case, then Mundy's Jim isn't too far from Conrad's Jim in his motivations.

This entry in the Jimgrim series is a bit of a reset after the previous two novels--not forgetting that all of these novels, published by Hutchinson in the early 1930s, were book editions of the stories that appeared in Adventure magazine during the early 1920s. It's not that it's plodding, but it does emphasize Jimgrim's application of strategy and tactics for desert warfare more fully than any book in the series so far. It also introduces a new character, Jeremy Ross, an Australian enlisted man who joins up with Jimgrim and Ramsden on an adventure to protect a gold mine deep in the Trans-Jordan. And lest anyone thinks Mundy might be inclined to stereotype Arabs unfairly, wait until you see what Mundy does with Jeremy and Australians.

Otherwise, in this book and the one to follow, The King in Check aka Affair in Araby, Mundy is at his most explicit in identifying himself and Jimgrim with the Arab cause. Their sympathies are clear. And the arguments in the book, the history, the commentary, and the recent events of World War I, all reinforce that point of view.

This is another good adventure story, but, again, it is setting up the next installment in the series rather than offering an end in itself.

Talbot Mundy brings everything together in this story. Beginning in California and travelling to Cairo to uncover Khufu's lost tomb, Ramsden, Grim, and Singh touch all the bases you expect to be covered. There is a vast treasure to be revealed, conflicts with mysterious political forces behind the scenes, and Mundy's ever present preoccupation with a just independence movement for the Arab people. He also introduces a couple of new characters, Joan Angela Leich (look up "Leich" in German, btw) and a Chinese mathematician with the secret of the Great Pyramid at his fingertips. Pyramidology also runs rampant in the book. Oh, yes, and Grim is back, albeit not in the same force as in the earlier books/stories of the Jimgrim series. This is still Ramsden's story.

Mundy's stories all occur in places he lived. It is more than one of the charms of his books. It is the key, often, to enjoying them fully. He achieves it, here, where the first third of the story and more takes place in the remote regions of California (Mundy lived for a while in Truckee and also knew the Lake Tahoe region, where, of course, therein lies Pyramid Lake) and has the feel of a detective novel. And, needless to say, the setting in Cairo for the remainder of the book closely incorporates Mundy's experiences of visiting Egypt and his obsession with the Great Pyramid.

Fabulous story. One of the best of the bunch.

Jungle Jest introduces Cotswold Ommony to Talbot Mundy's stable of adventure heroes. And he is quite an impressive protagonist. With him, Mundy amplifies many of the superior traits that earlier belonged to Jimgrim. Ommony operates all but without violence (it does, however, appear at the end of this novelization of this three part story). He is a man of diplomacy, tact, and understanding for his environs in India. He has what can only be described as an emerging spiritualism in his approach to life. More than any other work so far, Jungle Jest begins to reveal Mundy's growing interest in the principles of Theosophy.

For the work itself, the first two parts consist of stories published in Adventure during December of 1922 and January of 1923. These are the most Theosophically oriented. Ommony communes with a forest folk who are almost creatures of the natural and eternal design of life rather than people beholden to any organized civilization. These two parts also allow Mundy to give his version of how the Malabar Rebellion of 1921 came about. Once more, Mundy displays a high degree of sympathy for his Muslim characters, in particular, Mohommed Babar, a Muslim revolutionary from India's north bent on independence for his people. At the same time, he reveals the petty power struggles and ineptness of British rule.

The third part of the story originally appeared almost eight months after the first two, in August 1923. And it seems Mundy may have had another set to with his editors at Adventure. For the philosophical elements of the previous parts soon gives way to an intricate story of intrigue and, at the end, killing and death. It also involves the subterfuges and dishonesty of power-hungry Hindu priests. Hindus, it seems, are at the bottom of Mundy's Indian hierarchy. At the top, he holds the Sikhs in the highest regard, with Muslims from the north (what would be today's Pakistan) just below them. Hindus, however, often receive a large degree of contempt from Mundy. So it is, here, where the Hindu priests and mobs are shown to be creatures of uncontrolled passions and irrational, self-destructive behavior.

All in all, however, this makes for one of Mundy's better works, especially as it reveals his growing philosophical interests. It is also one of his longer works in novel form. And, like all good Mundy stories, there is a surprising level of sophisticated characterization along with wit and humor.

With The Nine Unknown, Talbot Mundy seems to be picking up on ideas present in the last of his Yasmini series, Caves of Terror. This novel, however, has an elaborate plot with a mystery cult whose origins stretch far back beyond any recorded human history. Needless to say, with references to Atlantis and speculation on magic sources of energy and superhuman intellects, this is also Mundy's most serious foray into fantasy, rather than just adventure, in the Jimgrim series.

The special treat in this novel is that it brings together just about every one of Mundy's Jimgrim heroes, Jim Grim, Ramsden, Singh, Ross, Athelston King, Ali and sons, and the babu. Only Ommony is missing. And where was he? For this Jimgrim novel has also moved its setting to India, away from the Middle East. And India is also the setting of Ommony's stories. I'm willing to bet that Cotswold Ommony has just the place for those hidden books of secret knowledge belonging to the Unknown Nine.

As with all Mundy's books set in India, his sense of atmosphere is superb. You are there. More than Palestine and Egypt, Mundy is at home in India. He's more familiar with its details, its very essence, than any other place he writes about.

Mundy is a fine literary stylist when he wants to be. And, here, he wants to be. His work can be elevated in tone as well as content, too, as it is in The Nine.

Finally, although unnecessary, it is so much more rewarding to read these stories and novels in their published sequence. You can see Mundy grow along with the new ideas he is importing into his fiction.

A much underrated book, this. Anyone expecting the usual Jimgrim/Ommony type adventure story is in for a surprise. Things begin fairly usually for a Mundy story, however, and it seems the reader is on to a tale that combines natural conservancy with intrigues and plots of officialdom and priests and capitalists. But gradually things change. Yes, all those early elements remain. But what promised to be a bit of a mystery turns into a full blown comic novel. With the babu supplying one laughable line of broken English after another, the plot soon turns into a romantic farce. Settings, actions, dialogue, and schemes become ever more outrageous. The Marriage of Meldrum Strange, as the title might indicate, also is something of a bedroom farce, with confused couples falling into one of the greatest jokes on a Mundy hero ever devised. It would spoil the plot to go too much further. But this is a fun joyful book to read. Mundy is clearly demonstrating his versatility as a writer. And if you get tired of the intricate plots, there is always Mundy's intense and poetic descriptions of the Indian forest to fall back on.