Stirred and Shaken
- Night of the Taranta by Christoph John
The Jon Drago series - book 4
Jon Drago, journalist and adventurer is in Puglia, Italy. By accident he enters into the social circle of Marcelo Sabatini, an Albanian billionaire businessman, politician and philanthropist. The more Drago learns about Sabatini, the more he comes to realise there is a vicious and violent secret which the Albanian and his entourage keep secret. The local Mafia know of it. The local police inspector knows of it. And so too does Sabatini's mistress, the beautiful dance Ariana.
As the Night of the Taranta festival draws near and one deadly situation leads to another, Drago is drawn inexorably into danger - but can he uncover the secret before a blood feud erupts along the sleepy shores of Otranto ?
Wherever Drago goes - trouble is sure to follow...
In Night of the Taranta we see Jon Drago head off again to the Mediterranean on another holiday come writer’s research trip. This one is framed much more as a holiday, an illicit week away with Drago’s fall-back bed mate, his sexy neighbour, Maddie.
By book four, I feel I’ve come to know Drago pretty well. Tasteful, self-assured, uncompromising, with an ambition for the ladies which knows no bounds – nor so his capacity for violence. Again, within this book, the author seems compelled to remind us of his character’s shabby history of dealing out unjustified physical harm to others. Drago’s backstory of unacceptable football hooliganism clearly haunts him and the author will not allow him to easily forget it. His shame is not blatantly expressed. Instead it lurks within him, under his skin, latent, ever present, permanently damming. His character seemingly forever soiled by it.
And yet, despite Drago’s shame and obvious regret, in his foreign adventures he doggedly carries on in the same vein. Picking a fight again, this time with an adversary big enough to stamp him out without another thought. Sabatini is a hard-boiled Albanian criminal who is surely far too dangerous an adversary for Drago to upset, and yet our hero is unperturbed. He shows no regard for himself in coming up against such a powerful, villainous foe. It’s as if he has a death wish – maybe he does. But even Sabatini isn’t enough for our reckless hero. Drago wants to take on the mafia too while he’s at it. He must be insane. But of course, this is precisely what Bond did day in, day out, so why not Jon Drago? At least now he’s on the side of good, fighting for righteousness rather than cleansing the Brighton streets of interlopers whose audacity to rock up on the train from such far-flung foreign places as Millwall are punished by fists and boots. Instead of protecting the city limits from outsiders, here Drago’s rational is to bring down the big players of organised crime.
He begins his mission in retribution of his girlfriend getting hurt by the crims for getting in the way of their operation, but he won’t have it when Sabatini goes on to behave badly towards his mistress, Ariana. In Sabatini’s eyes – or rather eye – Drago is an upstart, and he attempts to brush him aside. But our hero won’t be dismissed by anyone, no matter how powerful, how dangerous, and no matter how much there is at stake. Drago’s provocation is unrelenting. Poke the snake with a stick, then look around for another deadly reptile to taunt into an attack. The fight quickly escalates, becomes personal, and Drago’s tenacious jaw becomes locked onto his enemy’s sleeve, immovable, like one of those psychotic dangerous dogs. The battle will be until the end. He’s a persistent bugger.
As always with the author, the standard of writing is extremely good, and I was immediately gripped by John’s immersive storytelling. The prose is consistently tight and the story flows extremely well. The portrait of Sabatini is superbly detailed, and John writes a lovely characterisation of Drago’s latest love-interest, Ariana. The story behind Drago’s new friendship with the Italian restaurateur, Paulo (the author clearly couldn’t resist having him drive an Alfa Romeo Spyder) is revealed incrementally, unhurriedly drawing on flashbacks at just the right moments in the story, even well into the novel, to slowly flesh-out the genesis of their relationship – showing how Drago earned Paulo’s friendship, and exploring more of the story prior to Maddie’s accident. I do like how John uses flashbacks in this way. They are also well played in developing the mythic background to Taranta, and in setting up the eponymous night. I particularly enjoyed how John incorporates the character of Luisa, whose words are spoken in flashback, giving her descriptions and impressions of the music as Drago listens to it within the real-time of the narrative. It’s an ambitiously complex conceit, subverting the linearity of the narrative to produce a stylish and slick piece of writing. And as always, John illustrates his story throughout with some beautifully poetic description.
‘They turned vaguely west, cutting across the instep towards the coast where the industrial wastelands bruised the pastel paints of the early dawn canvas, the cranes and rigs and storage yards sprouting like waking giants from the sleeping land.’
Night of the Taranta feels a bigger, more expansive novel than Drago’s previous outing in Back to the Devil, which I saw as more focused, contained, concise. Of the two, Taranta feels wider, deeper, more ambitious, richer. But at times in Taranta I somehow felt myself further away from the narrative, from Drago’s journey than I did in Devil. On the whole, I think I preferred the relative simplicity of the Cretan story. In contrast, I found myself getting a little lost among the various factions within Taranta, particularly towards the end. Because the cast of the novel felt that much bigger and the story more intricate, it made the book less of an easy read. I’m not saying that a less challenging book might somehow be better, nor that I think Taranta isn’t as good as Devil. On the contrary, this book is a step up, demonstrating all the depth and complexity of a well-constructed novel. Personally, I just preferred the less complicated nature of the Cretan story and its telling.
A Brit, travelling to a country with a hotter climate, a mystery to solve, a beautiful woman to fall for, a bad man to take on and bring to book, Drago’s adventures have so much in common with 007’s. And what John does so effectively is the same thing which I love so much about Fleming’s Bond. The sense of escape, the experience of travel by proxy, driving fast, the enjoyment of food and wine, and coffee – and women. John’s focus on women, dining and fast cars reminds me so very much of Fleming – and I do enjoy the connection offered here between Drago and Bond.
With both authors, it’s so often in the moments between the action that, as a reader I am transported to an exotic place to vicariously enjoy Bond in the dining car aboard a sleeper train or in Taranta, Drago eating pasta outdoors at a Puglian restaurant while eying up the waitress. John writes about food and restaurant experiences well. And he writes his observations of woman particularly well. The girl manifests immediately: written with economy, she arrives fully-formed, credible, sexy, tempting. Women and food come together here in one beautifully rich scene, expertly painted and masterfully memorable – the squinting brightness of the sun palpable in John’s writing. This scene is a favourite of mine from Taranta. It’s so well penned, so real, that despite numerous others, it’s this one which stayed with me after I had finished the book.
I adore these small scenes in-between the bigger ones: A chance to observe Bond, to see and understand how he lives, how he behaves in calmer moments. Fleming did them so well, and for Drago, John’s imagining of them is every bit as good. With a smaller scope, I remember Back to the Devil allowing for more of this than Taranta – though there are still many scenes of this kind – and it’s probably for this purely personal reason too, that overall, I perhaps prefer that book over Taranta. But both are fantastic reads.
About the author
Christoph John lives, works and writes in south London. After a long career in retail management, he took a step back to fulfil his ambition of publishing a novel. The result was the first Jon Drago novel, Steel Wolf. A follow up, Gilgamesh, promptly followed. Both titles were available through Troubadour. Subsequently Chris won a Koestler Award for a poetry pamphlet The Silence of Butterflies. Chris is currently an Arts and Humanities student with the Open University. He enjoys the cinema, literature, music, history, European culture, wine and gastronomy – but not necessarily in that order.