Spy Flyers or Spyflyers? nobody knows
Oct. 24th, 2025 11:12 amThe Spyflyers, WE Johns (available on Faded Page here)
Finally got around to reading this one as other people are requesting it for Yuletide, and it was a fun WW1 spy adventure, and unusually for WEJ, it's a standalone - I was expecting to see Raymond show up to be our spymaster as he seems to in all of WEJ's other series regardless of whether there's any other overlap, but no, we have a different character in that role here. This is one of WEJ's earlier novels, 1933, and it does show - the set-piece scenes are good but the assembly is a bit hit and miss, it's all over the place in structure. You can also see bits WEJ has reused in later books - the entire opening chapter gets a reprise in Biggles in the Baltic - and the whole of it is WEJ trying out ideas that he puts together in a different and far far better way in Biggles Flies East. I don't think Flies East would be anywhere near as good a book if WEJ hadn't written this one first.
The gist of the story, without spoilers, is that our pilot-and-observer duo Rex and Tony are assigned to try to find double agents who are flying around in British aeroplanes causing problems in France in WW1. Rex and Tony are both fluent German speakers and to do this they are assigned a captured German aircraft and some German uniforms and have to land in German-occupied territory and investigate, and soon they encounter the mysterious Captain Fairfax who seems to be in more places than is reasonable for one person - and so we have a wonderful romp of everyone being undercover on the opposite side. And for all that the story is all over the place at the start, by the middle of the story WEJ starts to tighten up the adventure and the ending is great. And I have gone and requested it for Yuletide too now.
Now for spoilers - and I was surprised by several twists in this, so if you think you might read the book, read it first and enjoy the twists unspoiled, and then come back and chat about it with me.
( spoilers )
Finally got around to reading this one as other people are requesting it for Yuletide, and it was a fun WW1 spy adventure, and unusually for WEJ, it's a standalone - I was expecting to see Raymond show up to be our spymaster as he seems to in all of WEJ's other series regardless of whether there's any other overlap, but no, we have a different character in that role here. This is one of WEJ's earlier novels, 1933, and it does show - the set-piece scenes are good but the assembly is a bit hit and miss, it's all over the place in structure. You can also see bits WEJ has reused in later books - the entire opening chapter gets a reprise in Biggles in the Baltic - and the whole of it is WEJ trying out ideas that he puts together in a different and far far better way in Biggles Flies East. I don't think Flies East would be anywhere near as good a book if WEJ hadn't written this one first.
The gist of the story, without spoilers, is that our pilot-and-observer duo Rex and Tony are assigned to try to find double agents who are flying around in British aeroplanes causing problems in France in WW1. Rex and Tony are both fluent German speakers and to do this they are assigned a captured German aircraft and some German uniforms and have to land in German-occupied territory and investigate, and soon they encounter the mysterious Captain Fairfax who seems to be in more places than is reasonable for one person - and so we have a wonderful romp of everyone being undercover on the opposite side. And for all that the story is all over the place at the start, by the middle of the story WEJ starts to tighten up the adventure and the ending is great. And I have gone and requested it for Yuletide too now.
Now for spoilers - and I was surprised by several twists in this, so if you think you might read the book, read it first and enjoy the twists unspoiled, and then come back and chat about it with me.
( spoilers )




