Shadow on the Sun by Francis Cottam

Shadow on the Sun Reviews

• 
  Blair

  I'd suspected for a while that Francis Cottam and F.G. Cottam might be the same person, and having run out of books by the latter to read while waiting for the publication of
  The Waiting Room , I decided to finally find out by checking this out of the library. Even if the author photograph had left me in any doubt, the writing leaves no room for speculation - they're definitely one and the same. A Shadow on the Sun, however, is a historical novel, a combination of adventure and romance, minus the paranormal element that is the overriding theme of the F.G. books. I did enjoy it - the good points about the author's writing (interesting characters you can sympathise with, equally strong male and female protagonists, great atmosphere) are intact - but much less than the same writer's supernatural stories, for a few reasons:
  - This isn't really a fault with the book itself, but I didn't realise before I started reading that it's a sequel/companion to
  Hamer's War. I haven't read that one so I found it hard to visualise some of the past events which are briefly summarised here but presumably depicted in much more detail in the other book, and it was difficult to get to grips with the character of Martin Hamer since his death had occurred prior to the start of this story.
  - There is quite a bit of really annoying repetition in the narrative. A good example; 'he was there; that was what mattered. What mattered was that he was there.' This kind of thing happens way too often and was something I also noticed in
  The House of Lost Souls. As I said in my review of that book, I would've thought this could have easily been ironed out at the editing stage and it really niggled at me when I was reading.
  - Similar thing with the character names; why did Julia have to be referred to as 'Julia Smollen' all the time? There's only one Julia in the story, why couldn't she just have been called by her first name?
  Overall, this was diverting enough but just didn't match up to the F.G. Cottam books I've enjoyed. I may still read some of the others written under this name, but I think this author is far better as a writer of ghost stories.
• 
  Keith Currie

  Had I not already read Hamer's War by the same author and considered it an original and thought-provoking story, well told, I doubt if I would have bothered with this. Even when I read the dusk jacket blurb I did not find myself particularly drawn. But in the end the memory of Hamer's War drew me back to try A Shadow on the Sun. It is a sequel of sorts, and sequels, as well as book series, have a problem: how do they deal with the information of the preceding novel? Do they simply presuppose that the reader will have read the first book and start from there? In the case of this novel, Cottam has included much of what happened in Hamer's War, retelling the story from different points of view, to the extent that Martin Hamer's life and deeds influence all that happens. There is actually little need to have read the first book. This is not necessarily a strength, as the first book is so much the stronger, and there is a real feeling that there is a good deal of padding here.
  
  Martin Hamer's Polish lover, Julia, has settled in America where she bears his child, a daughter, Natasha, who greatly resembles her father. Both are protected by his American friend, Bill, who has his own demons to deal with. After about seventeen years, Landau, former German prison camp guard and old enemy of Martin and Julia, reappears from the past seeking revenge. There is weird parallelism running between both novels in the outworking of the plot, as well as a sense of anti-climax - I feel Cottam does not exploit his material as well as he might. Yet there are some very well written and memorable scenes: Bill's journey through Mexico and his first meeting with Julia have a real frisson of latent danger while Landau's parallel escape from Russian occupied Poland and Germany really grips the senses. There are indeed things to enjoy here, and I never felt like giving up, but I just feel this novel could have been so much more...
  
• 
  Linda

  follow up to Hamer's War
• 
  Linda Amos

  My first books from this author. Enjoyed it.