The name ‘Derek Robinson’ crops up from time to time, when my novels are discussed. He’s the man who wrote ‘Piece Of Cake’ and other flying yarns. He has a devoted following and some have compared us favourably, others less so. There have even been suggestions that I might have got some of my ideas from him.
In fact I’ve never read any of Mr Robinson’s stories and the only reason that there might have been similarities between ‘Piece Of Cake’ and ‘Blue Man Falling’ is that it appears we were both inspired by the same source material, a brief diary published in 1941 of the air battles during the Fall of France written by Paul Richey, who flew Hurricanes with No.1 Squadron, a fact duly noted in the Acknowledgements section of ‘Blue Man’ in some detail.
Something similar has occurred with the publication of ‘To Play The Fox’, which deals with war in North Africa. A Biggles enthusiast, whilst enjoying the adventure, apparently noted a resemblance to ‘Biggles Sweeps The Desert’, even down to the inclusion of a dastardly German character. Pure coincidence, of course, and though like most of my contemporaries I dipped into the Biggles series, I never got round to that one.
Meanwhile ‘Fox’ is consistently in the top ten of Amazon’s World War 2 chart and has risen, so far, as high as Number Five. With the summer vacation almost on us I’m counting on it doing even better as holidaymakers search around for a good read on those sun-kissed beaches. If you’ve read it and enjoyed it, spread the word. But would you do me a favour? Please don’t bracket me with Derek Robinson or Biggles, though both are no doubt admirable chaps…
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