The reissues (2) - Goodbye Mickey Mouse

The second of the four recently re-issued novels I want to look at today is Goodbye Mickey Mouse, Deighton's fourteenth novel first published in 1982. The story follows a group of American fighter airmen based at Thaxted in East Anglia, flying escort missions over Germany in 1943-4 at the height of the air war when the Americans were bombing during the day, at great cost to their men. Central to the novel are two contrasting characters - the reserved Captain Jamie Farebrother and cocky yank Lieutenant Mickey Morse. It is his Mustang Fighter - Mickey Mouse II with the cartoon mouse on the cowling - which gives the novel its title (although Arnold Schwartzman's new front cover for the book shows a more conventional pilot's 'sweetheart' illustration with decals showing seven successful hits for the pilot).

Not surprisingly, for an author who was a former RAF intelligence officer and also flies his own planes and has a long-standing passion for aircraft and their intrinsic importance to modern military history, this book was heavily researched by Deighton. In his new introduction, he quotes with relish the feedback from an 8th Army Air Force veteran he spoke to in his research who talked about the missions of 'Big Week', when up to 800 planes crossed the channel in one of the most intense air battles of the war.

His closeness to flyers was crucial to his research. He recounts how the genesis of the novel came from first-hand research he'd done for a half-completed story about the air war in Vietnam, during research for which he'd spent a couple of weeks on an US air base, training, eating and flying with the aircrews in an F-4 Phantom. While the Vietnam story came to nothing, he writes that he used this research and experiences to look again at the novel possibilities in the air war in the second show, having also been prompted by lengthy correspondence with a historian of the US air force in the UK.

Spending time with veterans of the 91st Bombardment Group at one of their reunions, he recalls just how self sufficient these air bases became for the men: everything was there, dentists, theatres, barbers, shops. It was a self-contained community of men and women. This led him to develop the narrative arc, telling each chapter from the perspective of a different character, not just the pilots but the technical specialists and ground staff. This meant each chapters language and construction would be slightly different, and accuracy and consistency paramount - but he gave up trying to get exact details of all the different speech patterns of this diverse community of Americans.

Though based in wartime, the plot mechanic is simple. Deighton writes: "Goodbye Mickey Mouse is a love story. Almost every fiction book I have written is to some extent a love story; I suppose I must be some sort of closet romantic. This story is a somewhat prosaic tale. It depicts desperate wartime romances and the cruel anguish they bring to all concerned, the ordinary ebb and low of human frailty during extraordinary times."

That sentiment is characteristic of much Deighton's writing on the war, both fictional and fact - the immense impact it has on individuals and their relationships with those around them during a time of unprecedented violence and upheaval.

The reissues - new insights into the writing process - SS-GB

As set out the last blog entry, at the end of May Len Deighton's publishers Harper Collins re-issued the first four books from his catalogue, each of which now has a fantastic new cover by Deighton's long-standing friend and creative partner (they worked on Airshipwreck together in the 'seventies), Arnold Schwartzman. The new books each have a short introduction by the author explaining his writing process behind each book and the genesis of the story, and much of what is there on the three or four pages of each introduction is new information which gives the reader a new insight into these familiar books.

While for obvious copyright reasons - and because you really should by these books in paperback again if you haven't read them for a while - I'm not going to reproduce at length what we learn in these new introductions (the most recent writing Len Deighton's produced) I'll offer up some hints.

First up, is SS-GB, his celebrated novel using the 'what if...' historical re-imagining approach. Schwartzman has created for it a wonderfully shocking image of a smugly satisfied Hitler opposite Parliament after the Wehrmacht has conquered London (in reality, it looks like Schwartzman's used the famous shot of Hitler when he'd entered Paris in 1940 and was photographed in front of the Eiffel Tower). It's a cover that definitely is there to grab the reader's attention.

So, what of the new introduction from Len Deighton? The catalyst for the book was he writes a late-night drink with his editor at Jonathan Cape Tony Colwell and designer friend Raymond Hawkey, following a discussion about the book they were working on at the time, Fighter. 'No one knows what we might have happened had we lost the Battle of Britain', Tony Colwell said. That was the spark. There's a sense here that no sooner had Len put one book to bed, he was already thinking ahead to his next project (or more likely, projects!).

Deighton reveals how this remark led him to look at the official German documentation and publications, which indicated that much of the military planning for an invasion and occupation of the UK had already been made in 1940 and was in the archives. He'd already talked to a number of German veterans and officials for his acclaimed World War Two histories and novels, so there was already a deep understanding of what such an invasion and occupation would have entailed.

A diligent researcher and note-taker, Deighton gives an insight into how he fleshed out this kernel of an idea - a detective thriller in which a British policeman working under the SS is the hero as he uncovers a Nazi plot to grab the UK's atomic weapons secrets while the King is in prison and the government in exile - from scratch to create the labyrinthine plot and authenticity which it needs to be believable as re-imagined history:

"Using the German data I drew a chain of command showing the connections between the civilians and the puppet government, black-marketeers and quislings, and the occupying power with its security forces and its bitterly competitive army and Waffen SS elements. My old friend and fellow writer Ted Allbeury had spent the immediate post-war period in occupied Germany as what the locals called 'the head of the British Gestapo'. Ted's experience was very valuable indeed and I used his experiences and anecdotes to the full."

Deighton has long argued that one of the keys to his novels is getting the details right; from that, everything flows. Papers and histories only give you one perspective; to make characters and plots realistic and believable, you've got to go to the source - the participants, the observers, the eye-witnesses, the experts. This is what he did with SS-GB certainly. He gives a detailed explanation for example of his research into the Old Scotland Yard off Whitehall - one of the main locations for the novel - to understand the workings of the Metropolitan Police during the war, and drew upon the direct experiences of a former detective from the period who gave him a guided tour around the old nick. That sort of research comes across in the novel as Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer becomes embroiled in a tussle between two competing SS officers in command of occupied London.

SS-GB was always a book that begged to be filmed. London felt the touch of the Nazi hand through the Blitz bombings but - due to the bravery of the fighter pilots or Hitler's failure to see through the defeat of British forces at Dunkirk and his subsequent excursions in Russia, whichever theory you believe - we escaped occupation. This novel is the closest you can probably get to understanding what it might have been like!

News on Deighton reissues

Word from my editorial contact at Len Deighton's publishers, Harper Collins, is that following the initial release of the first four revised editions of SS-GB, Bomber, Goodbye Mickey Mouse and XPD - all with new introductions by Len Deighton himself (more details in future posts) - is that on 1 October this year the following books will be published in new editions, again each with new introductions by the author: The Ipcress File, Horse Under Water, Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain. These are the books which are really synonymous with Deighton as an author and their appearance should result in another spurt in media attention, one would imagine.

In addition, there are plans to issue for Father's Day 2010 the Bernard Samson novels Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match (my personal favourites), which I look forward to tremendously, particularly for any author insight on this key character. The next trilogy in this series, Spy Hook, Spy Line and Spy Sinker, are also slated for publication later in 2010 along with the author's only collection of short stories, Declarations of War, some of which are among his finest works including the short story First Base - set in Vietnam - which was initially planned to be a full-blown novel. Len Deighton's French Cookery Course may also follow this year's republication of the Action Cook Book.

One thing they are also considering for the new novel reissues is to include commentary on the new cover designs by Deighton's great friend and design colleague Arnold Schwartzman. The four covers for the four classic Harry Palmer novels draw inspiration from Raymond Hawkey's originals, with a cornucopia of objects on each giving clues to the main themes in the story. They're excellent, and a great compliment to the story.

So - a lot to look forward to!