Fiction Review: Lost Causes
Adrenaline Pumping Anglo-Saxon Action!
I’m pleased to finally be able to sit down and write the review for Lost Causes, by Richard Nichols! This book holds a special place in my heart due to its importance in starting this Substack in the first place. Over time I had come to know lots of fiction authors on Twitter.
When Richard followed me I noticed the amazon link to this book in his bio and checked it out. I saw a man who had a good solid career in business behind him who had written a book as a labor of love, one with nothing but favorable reviews.
Richard Nichols, author of Lost Causes
This was when it occurred to me that the lack of oxygen given to good writers in favor of derivative woke trash was depriving true creativity from getting the attention it deserved. That was the moment I made the decision to start reviewing fiction.
The Plot
The story begins with a frenetic action sequence, a nameless operative desperately fights his way out of a ruined hacienda and through the jungles of Mexico. As the bullets fly he has just enough time to send a desperate message to his superiors, one that gives no answers but leaves plenty of questions.
From there the reader is introduced to the real protagonist of our story, John Buchan. Buchan is an “Axeman” for a shadowy department of the British government. A lifelong soldier who forsook his original identity and was declared dead in order to pursue war criminals and terrorists marked for assassination by the crown.
Buchan is sent to Mexico to find out about the disappearance of their operative and unravel a deadly terrorist plot that threatens to throw the West into chaos. Conflicts with the cartels, the federales and all manner of foreign terrorists will entangle him in a deadly web of violence, all while a category 5 hurricane barrels towards the peninsula. His time is short, he lacks any support, and he can rely only on himself once he’s on the ground.
The Style
One of the things that is fascinating about this book is the way it weaves themes from famous authors of this genre together. Nichols plays to stylistic strengths common to authors like Tom Clancy, Lee Child, or Ian Fleming, and avoids the weaknesses. The book feels purposely separated into three “acts” across neatly separated into thirds across an almost even 300 page novel.
The first 100 pages is a sort of “introduction” act that feels very reminiscent of the original Rainbow Six novel by Tom Clancy. Government agencies communicating across the world and compiling information. Briefing their men of action on the various actors that compose the threat the protagonist faces. We learn what type of man Buchan is, and once on the ground in Mexico the theme and style smoothly transitions to something that reminds me of Lee Childs “Jack Reacher” series of books. Buchan becomes the detective, the investigator, and we hitch a ride with his perspective for the rest of the story as he gathers clues and information in order to map out the threats he seeks to extinguish.
The last third of the book is a non stop rollercoaster of action. Bullets fly and people die, and Buchan hardly gets a break to rest in his race against time. Frenetic action and violence fit for a Michael Bay movie will have your hair standing on end. Buchan is extremely formidable, but the odds aren’t on his side. The struggle to survive and the constant gunfights are well written, very easily comparable to pulpy action stories from decades past or contemporary favorites like The Terminal List.
The Message
Nichols pulls no punches through exposition or dialogue about what he wants to talk about with this book. Buchans has a similar background to Nichols in that they are Colonial born Englishmen, Buchans in Rhodesia and Nichols in Jamaica. The story serves to shed some light on the complicated relationship such men have to their home country after the “Winds of Change” demanded the sunset of the British Empire. I spoke to the author about this, and this was what he had to say on the matter:
That´s the intention and one of my main reasons for writing. Ultimately I´m trying to revive the concept of/re-conceive the British male of yore - the ones that built the empire and won wars. For one thing, they deserve a better fate than the one they now have - being ridiculed and their legacy squandered. For another, unless we revive them we´re doomed as a nation and a race.
-Richard Nichols
At length the novel expresses the belief in two types of men that define the world, and the conflict between them. Rather than paraphrase, I’ll share some passages from the book explaining his views:
They were, above all and without exception, practical, intensely alert creatures, intelligent if not always intellectual, that had a healthy suspicion of anything beyond their first-hand experience, or anyone outside their immediate circle. In particular, they mistrusted the urban, urbane, indoor, office types that manipulated words, images and numbers to earn their crust. They were used to being ridiculed and insulted by such people - but didn’t pay much attention to what lesser beings thought, and understood that, no matter what anyone said to the contrary, character mattered, that truth and beauty mattered, that physiognomy was real, that courage was the highest form of morality and that the ultimate test of a man was whether he was any good in a fight.
In short, they were the backbone of everything, their value beyond numbers and beyond all reckoning; the kind of strong, hard, unselfish men on whose broad shoulders civilization ultimately rested and upon which the fate of nations lay. Often overlooked and always underestimated, they were masterless men of quiet dignity and indomitable courage who wore their burden lightly and who were ready, without too much fuss or bother, to die for their country if that was required, as a great many of their number had done over the years. And now they were dying out altogether, their proud priceless legacy eradicated, their reputation destroyed, and Buchan’s dark eyes narrowed some more as he recalled the promise that he’d made to himself. That the people responsible for Wyatt’s death were going to die.
He chuckled softly, as though enjoying some private joke. “Needless to say,” he said at last, “it’s not a life that I nor any man would truly care for. But, of course, I had never tried to analyze, interpret or understand my thoughts and my actions, not wishing to know what lay at their core; not wishing to know the truth about myself, terrified of what I might find. And when things went wrong, as they inevitably did, I did what all people like me do: I ignored my own obvious culpability. Instead, I used denial, projection and self-delusion to make excuses and rationalizations for my misfortune. But the human mind is a very delicately balanced mechanism. It doesn’t take much to throw it off balance. It certainly can’t withstand this kind of relentless flight from reality and the inescapable catastrophes that result, and inevitably it soon starts to malfunction. Physical changes actually occur in the brain, exacerbating and consolidating the condition, so that before long a neurotic sense of inferiority and insecurity grows. It never really goes away, haunting us day and night. And, before long, it transforms itself into a sense of resentment - a bitter, malicious, seething resentment not just for the self, but for everybody else in the world as well, especially of the more ambitious, competent and successful ones. It’s like a fire burning away at the soul. And after a while, that resentment, that fire, has nothing left to feed on, so it remains smoldering - held back, waiting to be released…”
In Conclusion
Lost Causes is a great read. Gunfights and terrorist plots that reminds me of a good solid 90’s action flick. The heroic badass slays goons and rivals by the score with ruthless brutality, gets the beautiful exotic ladies, and lights up a cigarette after surviving things that would doom a lesser man.
All while reminding us that keeping this aspirational fire alive in the hearts of men is one of the most important things we can do.
Eternally grateful for this Aristophenes. Hope to see you in Mexico sometime. The tequilas are on me!
Fantastic review for a fantastic book.