34. Watcher in the Woods by Geoffrey Household

Household really had a specific niche in the men's adventure fiction genre:  manhunting and tracking in the forest, particularly agricultural regions of England.  Maybe I need to read more of his books but of the three I have read, all of them had extensive tracking and stalking scenes involving pages and pages of minute detail about moving around a small area, playing a cat and mouse game with ones hunter.  I enjoy his books but don't love them as the human element is always kept at a cool distance and his badass characters so steeped in oldboy humility and reserve that it tends to lose its excitement.

I found this one at a free book box in Oakland on the way to the Temescal pool.  It's a nice hardback from Thrift books.  The story here is about a now-British of aristocratic Hungarian background who worked for the British OSS in the Second World War.  The story starts with a postman getting blown up just outside the hero's door.  At first he thinks it was a mistaken address or some terrible accident, but after some prying by his Aunt (with whom he lives), he starts to move past the denial and realize that he was most likely the target of the bomb.  We then learn that as part of his war service, he went undercover to work for the Gestapo and was stationed in Buchenwald.  This is an example of where the humanity just seems gone from Household's work.  The hero has shame and regret about that work, but those feelings are never really addressed with any passion or energy.  Though he used his role to save some important women from the death chambers, you would still think that anybody working at a concentration camp would have some serious issues and at least acknowledge the atrocity that he had experienced.  Here it is brushed off as a dark stain on his reputation and sense of self-worth.

Once he realizes that he is being hunted, he heads out to the country where he feels he will have an advantage, both because of his training (as an observer of small animals!) and because it will be harder to surprise him.  Here we get the bulk of the book which is him using different tricks that involve hiding in the forest for long periods of time or going for long walks or rides in the countryside to slowly draw out his hunter and reveal him.  This eventually works and the final climax is an endless night time stalking conflict with each having limited bullets and not wanting to fire because it would waste bullets and give away their position.  I wouldn't call it gripping, but it was kind of cool and interesting.  Maybe if you are someone who has done a lot of old school waiting hunting this stuff would seem quite realistic and technical and therefore exciting, but I really need maps to figure out what is going on so it all becomes sort of abstract.

Of course, his hunter is also a "gentleman" and by the end, each understands the other that it is almost a romance.  The last line of the book is literally them holding hands.  Though there is a real female love interest, the passion isn't quite the same level as between two gentlemen who each deeply respects the rules of the game hunting for one another.