The Grand Illusion - Syd Moore ****

By Brian Clegg

It’s easy to mistake this book for a historical fiction/fantasy crossover, but apart from one small element, it is straightforward fiction in a historical setting. The military had shown an interest in camouflage in the First World War, when some ships were given disruptive or ‘dazzle’ paintwork that made it hard to see where the ship began and ended or what its direction of travel was. But the whole business was supercharged from 1939.

A rag-tag group of professionals including a zoologist, artists and a stage magician designed camouflage and fakery both to hide machinery and make fake airfields to distract bombers. Later guns and tanks would be disguised to look like trucks. Syd Moore sets her fictional team in this world, but faced with an even bigger challenge: trying to prevent the German invasion of Britain by playing on the occult leanings of Hitler’s high ranking officers.

The central character, Daphne Devine is stage assistant to the illusionist Jonty Trevalyan. She is pulled into this plan, despite mixed feelings from the military about a woman’s involvement. Devine is an appealing character, reminiscent of Amanda Fitton in Margery Allingham’s 1933 novel Sweet Danger (later reappearing as Campion’s wife). Where Trevalyan’s role is primarily limited to devising a mechanism that will be used to give the appearance of a ‘real’ occult ceremony, Devine goes though much more and is central to the ceremony being pulled off.

It’s a great setting for a story, and Moore makes the most of the clash between the army’s inflexibility and the exotic nature of the team attempting to produce the grand illusion. She even slips in a passing reference to Dennis Wheatley for older readers. It was an enjoyable read, but is distinctly slow paced, apart from the action scenes. For example, we don’t even get an inkling as to why Devine and Trevalyan have been recruited until around page 181. Part of the slowness was due to a lot of inner monologues – and the use of the present tense, often employed to give more of a sense of immediacy doesn’t overcome this.

One entertaining point was the use of a variant of the Dan Simons and Christopher Chabris ball pass counting experiment as a way to establish the awareness of a series of recruits. The actual experiment wasn’t undertaken until decades later, of course, and it’s very unlikely that it would have worked with the static test used of counting skittles, rather than the dynamic ball passes in the modern experiment – but it’s a fun addition to the storyline.

The element of fantasy comes in where there appears to be some doubt as to whether or not the ceremony had an actual effect – which felt a little out of place in what was working as a straightforward historical novel. There was also an oddity that it was clear that the deception would only work if the occult ceremony could be reported back to German high command (almost certainly with moving pictures). That this happens seems to be accidental, rather than being an essential that had to be arranged by the team, which is odd to say the least.

Overall, though, this is a really original use of one of the stranger developments of the Second World War and how it might have been taken to new heights.

You can buy The Grand Illusion from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.

Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.