Leslie McManus
1976
Well, here's another elusive series that caught my eye sometime last year and I instantly became obsessed with tracking down. Four books in total, only printed in the UK, which means a real pain in the ass for me to acquire as there's no ebook and probably won't be.
Since Vixen is plural, I instantly assumed this was a men-on-a-mission type of thing--but with vixens! Coupled with the gorgeous cover art in WWII, it's the sort of stuff that gets me super pumped. But yeah, the aforementioned continental divide made this tough to find, and after a handful of months and two auction losses I got a hold of the first two, along with another McManus book, Operation Backlash, courtesy of paying out the ass in shipping from Australia.
And, as fate would have it, curiosity got the best of me, at least with this first volume.
As I soon discovered, it appears that each volume of Churchill's Vixens is a self-contained ordeal, with each book focusing on a particular 'vixen'. This cuts right to the chase, and within the first couple of pages we know our French heroine's husband is collaborating with the Nazis. This makes her sick to her stomach, so she finds the first bloated, middle-aged fisherman on the dock and promises she'll sleep with him if he brings her to the UK. His "enormous erection" steals her virginity and then she's in Britain, instantly joining up with the new Churchill's Vixens program.
There's no real explanation how she gets picked, but alas, she's on the team. There's maybe a paragraph worth of information on what she did there and the training she undertook, but I guess she's ready to go. And back to France she goes, this time undercover.
She's teamed up with this just awful American guy that's supposed to be French. They pose as a married coupled and stay in some village. He constantly sexually harasses the heroine, but now that she's no longer a virgin she's starting to like it or something absurd. They play all serious that they've got an important mission to accomplish, but the thin veneer of professionalism and duty is quickly eradicated and they start to frequently have sex.
There's only a few mentions of people they meet up with. They sabotage a train in like a page, then travel around a bit and have some more sex. At one point there's a huge resistance group that I would assume is going to storm this compound, but somehow they sneak in with German uniforms (this isn't explained) and take it with ease. Some tanks show up and they all run for the hills. That's about how the action goes.
Then it's back to frolicking in barns. Just endless, boring sex. Even if you're a simpleton like myself the reader is just given nothing to work with here. There's hips and contours and everyone has amazing, big breasts (a man after my own heart) and then just 'love-making'; simple and sweet, then it's over and onto the next rural location or village hideout to have more bland, vanilla sex.
And that's basically The Breton Butcher, unfortunately. There's a few dim lights that shine, like our heroine summarily executing a traitor in front of a crowd in a bar, but even the conclusion is dull and quick. McManus' writing has no real flow; you're always left just wandering about, unsure of the continuity or the importance of anything, and when things happen they're so poorly executed it's hard to even enjoy.
I'll obviously be reading my other two McManus books to get my moneys worth, but after this I can't say I'm all that eager to do so.
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