The Glasshouse Gang #1

 

I stumbled upon a four book series written in the late 1960s pretty much by accident about a year ago. And, by golly, it was a really fun series.

The Glasshouse Gang (1967), by Gordon Landsborough, kicked off a four-book series with an interesting premise. The main characters begin as inmates in the Glasshouse, a British military prison located in Egypt during World War 2. The prison is a brutal place, with the inmates treated in a violently sadistic manner. When former officer John Offer gets out after a term for theft, he wants revenge.

 

With other former inmates, he forms what comes to be called the Glasshouse Gang Commando Unit. They track down and beat up several of their former guards and eventually even stage a raid on the prison itself, exacting vengeance on the prison's commanding officer and recruiting more members.

 

In the meantime, Offer has shown his intelligence and audacity by hiding the G.G.C.U. in plain site, setting up tents and supplying themselves via night-time raids on depots and pay centers. They thus blend in with the myriad other British units in the area.

 

Eventually, the military police get suspicious and the gang shifts location out into the desert, where several of the gang are captured by Germans. A rescue mission is necessary, leading to a very exciting climax involving a machine-gun equipped truck being chased by a number of machine-gun equipped German vehicles.

 

John Offer is an interesting protagonist. There are sociopathic aspects to his personality, but he's also a good leader, able to plan missions and improvise under pressure. The book draws on the same anti-authoritarian vibes that classic WWII movies such as "The Dirty Dozen" and "Kelly's Heroes" used so effectively. There's a counterpoint to this, though, as Offer also has to depend on giving structure and order to his gang of thugs so he can ensure their freedom and survival. There's a real tension there--Offer earns the respect of most of the men, but a number of hardcases don't take orders willingly. This becomes an increasingly important plot point as the story progresses and brings an interesting sense of irony to the book's anti-authoritarian attitude.

But, though the novel does have some depth in both theme and character, it exists mostly for the action. And, as the series progresses through three more novels, that action gradually becomes more intense and more exciting. Over the next few months, we'll take periodic looks at the rest of the series.