American engineer turned industrial trouble-shooter Neil Mannix doesn’t expect that coordinating the move of a giant transformer across Nyala, an oil-rich African nation, will be easy – at 550 tonnes, longer than a football pitch, and with an average speed of five miles an hour, the transformer needs a full support crew, and rig drivers aren’t the most stable group of men. That’s why they pay him, after all. What Mannix didn’t anticipate was Nyala’s General Semangala, the head of the Air Force, launching a coup and precipitating a civil war.
This is not my favourite of Bagley’s novels, and I haven’t read it in well over a decade. I was pleasantly surprised – though the characterisation is less defined than in many of his other works, which is probably why I enjoyed it less than some others, the plot is speedy and many of his characteristic elements are present. The biggest difference is that, though Mannix has to be ingenious and inventive, he’s less of an Every Man than the usual Bagley hero. I realised, reading Juggernaut, that one of the things I relish in the writing is the triumph over adversity of an ordinary man placed in extraordinary circumstances. This is obvious in some of the Bagley books I most enjoy - High Citadel, The Vivero Letter, The Freedom Trap, The Tightrope Men, my all-time favourite, The Snow Tiger, and particularly in Running Blind. In the case of Juggernaut, Mannix is barely out of his element – yes, the situation is complex and extraordinary and difficult, but he’s not flawed and he barely cracks a sweat. Even a relatively pedestrian book by Bagley is better than most writer’s better offerings, but this is far from his best and isn’t a good starting place for anyone new to the writer and interested in trying his work. - Alex
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