Biggles Looks Back

I can't summon the words to review this really I am simply sat in awe. What an absolutely insane thing for W.E. Johns to conceive of, plot, write and publish without apparently any knowledge that he had put pen to paper and written... Biggles Looks Back.

Things I loved in no particular order:

• Biggles' shabby sausage
• The fact that they go to the glass manufactory TWICE and are forcibly taken out to a delicious lunch by the Italian proprietor TWICE.
• A secret passage figures significantly into the plot. And it exits from a literal tomb.
• All the fairy tale references, and of course that it culminates with a genuine happily ever after for Biggles, Erich and Marie.
• Biggles and Erich spending multiple nights co-sleeping with no one but an owl to see what happened.
• Marie using the golden opportunity of being flown out of the country to smuggle jewels.
• Everyone crowding around the breakfast table to once again talk about where in the world Erich von Stalhein could have got to.
• Biggles unsubtly perusing maps of Central Europe and moping around the flat so hard that everyone does an intervention.
• Erich being a VIOLINIST. Private accomplishments!! C'mon Biggles he wants to demonstrate them to you soooo badly, just let him.
• The fact that Reinhardt accidentally gives Biggles the exact photographs he needs in an attempt to thwart him.
• Everything to do with the entry into the castle, from the car chase to scaling the cliff by climbing tree roots to Erich showing up and joining the fun.
• Algy accidentally doing a bit of a Biggles impression by listing off some of Erich's professional accomplishments, even if he is doing it to try and persuade Biggles out of rescuing him.
• THE RESTAURANT SCENE. How time flies when I am with you! The fact that they have dinner together all the time, it is not helping them beat my personal Garak/Bashir comparison allegations .
• Pursuant to the restaurant scene, the fact that Johns makes sure to mention that Biggles and Erich go to Marie's little cottage All The Time to talk about their adventures.
• The bit where Marie asks Biggles if he and Erich have become friends and he says 'very good friends'. I adore them.
• Marie being so steely and determined in her own quiet way, having to deal with Reinhardt and his lackeys.
• Bertie being Bertie. Need I say more.
• EDIT: The ongoing theme that is Erich von Stalhein being extremely willing to lay his life down on Biggles' behalf. Given his self-preservation instincts in previous books being finely honed enough to let him swim through crocodile infested waters and survive, it says a lot! Nothing good about his self esteem obviously but it's catnip for me the angst hound.
• ANOTHER EDIT: Finally learned the meaning of the word lugubrious thanks to the use of its adverbial form no less than three times in the narrative.

Basically: WHAT a BOOK.