''Wrath of the Lion'' is a 1964

thriller Thriller may refer to: * Thriller (genre), a broad genre of literature, film and television ** Thriller film, a film genre under the general thriller genre Comics * ''Thriller'' (DC Comics), a comic book series published 1983–84 by DC Comics i ...

novel by Jack Higgins. Like the more famous '' The Day of the Jackal'' by Frederick Forsyth, the background to Higgins' book is the last ditch effort by the

OAS OAS or Oas may refer to: Chemistry * O-Acetylserine, amino-acid involved in cysteine synthesis Computers * Open-Architecture-System, the main user interface of Wersi musical keyboards * OpenAPI Specification (originally Swagger Specification), ...

, a French dissident paramilitary organisation, to take revenge on

Charles de Gaulle Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (; ; (commonly abbreviated as CDG) 22 November 18909 November 1970) was a French army officer and statesman who led Free France against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government ...

, the

President of France The president of France, officially the president of the French Republic (french: Président de la République française), is the executive head of state of France, and the commander-in-chief of the French Armed Forces. As the presidency i ...

, for his having granted independence to Algeria and ended French rule there.

Plot summary

The OAS has managed to suborn the crew of a French Navy submarine, the ''L'Alouette''. From a secret hideout in the British-ruled

Channel Islands The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...

, an aristocratic OAS commander, Philippe de Beumont, sends the submarine to missions of revenge against French shipping. British Intelligence and the French Deuxième Bureau team up, each sending an agent to locate the rogue submarine and terminate its activities. After many adventures and perils the two agents, French and British, accomplish their mission to the full - in the process both also finding enduring love with, respectively, the daughter and the widowed daughter-in-law of a retired British general living in the Channel Islands.

Themes

Reviewer Naomi Wineman wrote:Naomi R. Wineman, "Heroes, Psychotics and In Between" in Miranda Brandt (ed.) "The Killing Fields in the Mirror of Literature and Film", London, 1981. " ''Wrath of the Lion'' is noteworthy for the fact of virtually all its cast of male characters (heroes and villains alike, and it is not always easy to determine which is which) being professional soldiers, very deeply scarred, traumatized and embittered by the wars of the middle 20th Century (

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Korean War , date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...

, the French wars in Indo-China and

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...

, the British

Malayan Emergency The Malayan Emergency, also known as the Anti–British National Liberation War was a guerrilla war fought in British Malaya between communist pro-independence fighters of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) and the military forces o ...

). The memories both of the horrors which they endured as prisoners of very inhumane captors and the horrors which they inflicted as utterly ruthless and determined fighters come up again and again, and substantially affect the plot in the book's present. In particular, the book's main protagonist Neil Mallory is specifically mentioned as having the nickname "The Butcher of

Perak Perak () is a state of Malaysia on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. Perak has land borders with the Malaysian states of Kedah to the north, Penang to the northwest, Kelantan and Pahang to the east, and Selangor to the south. Thailand's ...

". A long flashback to 1954

Malaya Malaya refers to a number of historical and current political entities related to what is currently Peninsular Malaysia in Southeast Asia: Political entities * British Malaya (1826–1957), a loose collection of the British colony of the Straits ...

, including graphic descriptions of the systematic torture and extrajudicial execution of prisoners, show him to have amply earned this nickname, yet knowing his past does not prevent the warm-hearted Anne Grant from falling very deeply in love with him. Given the book's great emphasis on the characters' tortured and traumatized psyche, the final scene seems a bit forced, with both victorious agents being embraced and kissed by their respective sweethearts and the reader promised a future of 'they lived happily ever after'."

References

1964 British novels Novels by Jack Higgins British thriller novels Algerian War fiction Works about the Malayan Emergency John Long Ltd books {{1960s-thriller-novel-stub