A Good Clean Fight

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A Good Clean Fight
Author	Derek Robinson
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	War novel
Publisher	Harvill
Publication date	1993
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	453 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0002713381

A Good Clean Fight is a 1993 novel by Derek Robinson, and a sequel to Piece of Cake (1983), his famous and controversial novel of the Battle of Britain. It continues the story of RAF Hornet Squadron, now posted to North Africa in 1942, during a lull in the fighting. Some of the characters from the previous novel, such as Squadron Leader Fanny Barton and know-it-all intelligence officer Skull Skelton, reprise their roles. As the squadron engages in increasingly suicidal ground attacks in an effort to lure the Luftwaffe into a fight, Captain Jack Lampard leads an SAS patrol behind enemy lines and Paul Schramm, a German intelligence officer, tries to concoct his own scheme to beat the SAS at their own game.

[edit] Hornet Squadron

The fictional RAF Hornet Squadron features in several novels by Derek Robinson, most notably Piece of Cake, which detailed their service during the first year of the Second World War. In that novel the squadron was equipped with the Hawker Hurricane, but by the time A Good Clean Fight takes place they have been replaced with the Curtiss P-40 Tomahawks and Kittyhawks. Many of the surviving characters from the previous novel return, including: "Fanny" Barton, the squadron's young New Zealander commanding officer; "Pip" Patterson, a Scottish pilot who has been promoted to Flight Lieutenant; "Skull" Skelton, a former Cambridge University don who serves as the squadron's intelligence officer and voices many unpopular theories about the war; and Flight Lieutenant "Uncle" Kellaway, the squadron's adjutant and a veteran of the First World War. Unusual for a Derek Robinson novel, A Good Clean Fight also features other branches of the armed forces, such as a patrol of the Special Air Service (SAS), as well as several characters from the Luftwaffe and Afrikakorps.