A remarkably lucid and targeted vision that cuts through the haze like a sniper’s bullet soars over an opium field.
What I like about Margaret Millar’s novels is that every chapter is strong enough and laced with enough character, tone and climax to function as its own short story.
Entire nations and towns were occupied, overruled by new leaders. You could hear the pin of a grenade drop. From a distance, you would have no idea.
It’s as if the lead character of a madcap Hunter S Thompson novel has stumbled into a Graham Greene thriller – that’s the best way I can hope to set the scene for Rafael Bernal’s 1969 cult classic The Mongolian Conspiracy.
I must’ve started reading this 933 page epic a year or so ago. From the first chapter I knew I loved it. And yet it took me so long to actually get through it. I realise now that I didn’t want to part with it.
To think that Cooper writes, produces, stars, directs, composes much of the music and sings his own material is astonishing – this is the genesis of a multi-talented artist to rival the likes of Welles, Beatty, Eastwood and Chaplin.
