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Dark Rose

Charles EP M.

Well-known member
Published by SLP
I've started on Mike Lunnon-Wood's Dark Rose, in 1995 a thirty-seconds-into-your-future thriller and now accidental AH, where the Palestinians and Libyans take over Ireland. Why? Because that's an insane premise that I thus must read, and Lunnon-Wood did some good army thriller work with Long Reach so here we go.

4%, and SPOILERS ahead:


The first thing that's noticeable is the plan for the takeover is mental. Palestinian financiers are using dodgy financial dealings to take over businesses and property and basically buy out Ireland, with violence to be used later if that doesn't work on its own (and the guy who'll be leading said violence is pretty sure it won't). A serious of quiet kidnappings and threats are used to blackmail various parts of the Irish state so they can't do anything, up to and including the taoiseach. Only two students notice in time and warn the British embassy.

So this is a very, very, very silly way to do it but I assume Lunnon-Wood knows this because he doesn't dwell on it. On paper it would be better to show the discovery of the plot instead of just "oh yeah we spotted this thing, British Embassy" but in practice, no, better to go "sinister Palestinian financiers take over everything and abduct the Taoiseach's son" in the first few pages of chapter one and just got on with "it happened" so you can do your plot of Irish rebels and British support VS Libyan-Palestinian takeover. (The nature of the enemy does feel, as I think Coiler's talked about, this post-Cold War moment where there's no Soviet Union to use for technothrillers and invasion stories, so writers are going "right who did I read about in the paper today, THEY'LL do") Somewhat iffy bit where we're told the Irish blithely don't notice because they're too into The Promise Of Open Borders.

Did like a British spy asking the Irish whistleblowers why they went to them, and then going "right but why did you REALLY do it" after a long paragraph about Britain's Defence Mentality, and the whistleblowers admit they went to the Yanks first and the Yanks went "that's horseshit, fuck off".
 
15% in, MI6 is arranging to fly out a "Blue List" of known faces if the balloon goes up and arranging a "White List" of potential resistance people to organise (while dropping spies and SAS in). This is the bit that feels a bit 'off' for a story where Ireland is invaded, the resistance is being organsied and started by Britain (but of course Britain was the primary, and larger, book market).

We also have a local girl and an invader (though she doesn't know it yet) in love, the old classics!
 
The baddies have smuggled a battalion's worth of armoured vehicles into Ireland over the months and MI6/SAS suspect a dozen main battle tanks must be there too, another brief "yeah they just have, roll with it cos you want to see the tanks". Also a nice bit where it's not all going the way of the plucky heroes as one of their key contacts has just been "disappeared" from his flat, so somebody's spotted something.

Nice scene as our SAS main Aiden Scott breaks into the Taoiseach's* house to sound him out in secret as an asset, especially as Scott says "ah yes the Yanks are being briefed" without the slightest idea if that's true (it is) but knowing the Taoiseach will want to hear that. The guy's pretty clear "there is no government I would wish to appeal to less than the British" for martial aid** but fuck it. (Good description of a baddie, "now getting heavy like all of us")

* Who doesn't seem to be a fictionalised Albert Reynolds, the one in power when this was written

** I am going to be interested in how it gets around the whole "the EEC exists and would collectively be pissed off" issue

It feels like the Palestinians should be providing the muscle not the money.

It's possible Libya's sending them the cash and I haven't got to that bit yet (the vehicles have a Syrian flag too!).
 
Recruiting a local farmer for preemptive resistance:

"My name is not important."

"Well you can fuck off, then. I'm busy."

It also turns out farmer Pat O'Sullivan's already fucked up a Pales-Libyan transmitter just on grounds of 'compulsory purchase my wife's land for that shit, will you?' Also a note for realism, 'okay this isn't how MI6 usually does stuff but because of this specific plot, they're doing it now'. And a mass of weapons are being sneaked across the border for arming potential friendlies, while the baddies have stolen a load of Irish passports.

Respected Irish academic is telling MI6 to "appeal to the Celt in them", meaning to appeal to legends, history, and culture to inspire revolt and the Irish diaspora, which you would probably do in this situation, and that British forces showing up should be "positioned" as fellow Celts rather than The Brits. (MI6 carefully saying well, "Celts" turning up "would need no other flag other than of Ireland", cough) Though we also have the respected Irish academic saying "It is thought by historians that it was Ireland that kept learning and Greek and Roman literacy alive until the Rennaissance", eh????

A nice bit of broadening things, it's the French intelligence services - responding to requests from UK - who spot PLO men in Zurich hanging with suspicious Saudi bagmen and potential Hezbollah/Syria linked figures, and that the latter's using an Irish passport, rather than MI6 all alone.

A potted history given of Israel/Palestine, which is unfortunately wrong in key areas despite being said by a MI6-recruited Arabist (ignoring the Jewish immigration to Palestine was going on pre-WW2 and the Palestinians were pissed off about it & violence happened in the 20s and 30s because it was clear this was a zero-sum situation; America pushes for a Jewish homeland and not Britain who never promised this, apparently; 'they don't have a problem with Arab Jews', many living in Israel because Arab states encouraged them to move, let's say)

And the big plot is revealed, this is a scheme to buy Ireland to be the new Palestinian homeland, or at least they'll say that very loudly as a "neener neener" bargaining chip to get Palestinian land back out of Israel, "hey you started this precedent, West, we'll give it back if you do". Fucking hell. Lunnon-Wood's heard Go Big Or Go Home and with his plot, he went big.

Also an awkward bit of 90s progressivism as we learn one of the student resistance is gay and in the closet about it, and our SAS man muses, and I quote directly, "no one who ever worked with a gay could doubt their courage."

I remember this being a very weird ride.

IT IS.
 
The British have recruited an Irish expat businessman in America as a key figure in their plans and to fund & produce the various "Rise Up You Celts" propaganda they need, which is sensible (and gives us another prominent Irish resistance figure from a new angle). Down on the ground, the rural irregulars are forming. There's also a big from our academic about The Spirit Of Irish Celticness And What It Means, which feels a bit too written-by-a-guy-who-isn't but has a genuine romantic love of the place.

And now, the confirmation the Palestinians are buying out Ireland as a bargaining chip:

"Planned with the assistance of the Lebanese in return for a massive interest-free loan in the rebuilding of Beruit, it will be enforced by, whait for it, the Libyans. Standing army, air force, the works. Other Arab states have put in token bits of support like equipment, but the wild card will be the one group who have promised massive support when the time comes."

"Who?"

"Iraq. Saddam bloody Hussein has promised men and equipment to support the Palestinian brothers in this new phase of their struggle. Etc, etc. They have refused, apparently. Too much bad press. They are unhappy about using the Libyans, but acknowledge they can't do it on their own."
 
Though we also have the respected Irish academic saying "It is thought by historians that it was Ireland that kept learning and Greek and Roman literacy alive until the Rennaissance", eh????

Some people talk about Irish monks and monasteries preserving literature that was lost on the continent during the Dark Ages. They ''Saved Civilization'', you see.
 
It's almost as crazy as that Tom Clancy book where Japan decides to attack the US in revenge for WWII.

Though it says a lot about Tom Clancy that the sequels made the Japan-US war book seem plausible in comparison.

I remember when people were fussing that the Amazon Jack Ryan series wasn't going to be adapting any of the novels as some were advocating, wanting it to take the Game of Thrones approach of doing roughly a novel a season, someone pointing out that Debt of Honor was stretching plausibility when it was published in the nineties and how many people were going to buy it happening in 2020-something. I think it's Sum of All Fears that has a rogue group of East Germans attacking West Berlin even though it had ceased to exist by the time it was published.
 
It's a wonderfully mid-90s point that Saddam Hussein - and this is years after the Gulf War, so Iraqi military power is quite degraded - is the threatened Boss Fight, and darker and scarier than Gaddafi so the PLO don't dare take the offer.

To be fair, they might also have resented the Iraqis for getting so many Palestinians kicked out of post-war Kuwait.

Though it says a lot about Tom Clancy that the sequels made the Japan-US war book seem plausible in comparison.

Back when it was written, there was a lot of chatter about Japanese and US geopolitics putting them on a collision course (such as the book below). The logic wasn't THAT unsound, but it largely ignored the rise of China (providing incentive for the US and Japan to stick together) and of course missed out the war on terror completely.


Chris
 
The first leaders of the intentionally-named-to-sound-Retro-Celtic Tuatha de Dannan - or what they're being already called in rural areas, Buachailli ("the Boys") - and their codenames like Cuichalain are now fully gathered, though it's a bit of an unintentionally laugh that four of them have had specific backstories & introductions on how they worked out Something Was Up and got drawn in, and the fifth is "well he's an Irish poet innit". A good bit where an SAS man faking an Ulster accent finds later his warning 'they know where you live' goes wrong because the woman assumes he's an IRA man and thus must be in with them & making a threat. University College Dublin now has four active student and faculty resistance cells. And Royal Engineers are sneaking in to build tunnels, Vietcong style, which does flag up two issues so far which is:

a) In a book about Ireland being invaded, most of the heavy lifting for the resistance is being done by Britain

b) The plot requires the Palestinian forces to very quietly take over large chunks of the country before the balloon goes up without anyone noticing for over two years, but also for the British to do exactly the same without the Palestinians noticing.

Now our SAS man is teaming up with an international art thief (temporarily released from jail) to rob the Ardagh chalice and a few other important relics from the National Museum to ensure they're out of enemy hands - would've liked that to be longer, what a great idea to put in - and MI6 are using technothriller forensics to track down the Taoiseach's abducted son using tiny bits of dirt on a letter, so the CIA can use their mega-satellites to locate him in Libya.

And then, someone warns after learning of a group of Spanish students:

"DId you know there are four hundred thousand Palestinians in Chile?"

"No."

"Well, we have been looking for Arabs. Ethnic Semites, if you will. How many of us could tell the difference between a Spaniard, a Lebanese, a Greek, an Armenian, or," he said, "a Palestinian?"

"My god," she said, "the students. They could be Chilean Palestinians?"

"Yes. And how many other 'students' this year were the same?"
 
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