The Shadow of the Master by James Clegg

Tower Hill Press 2003, 124 A5 pages $25.00

This is a gem of a book about Queensland chessplayers (and a sprinkling of southerners) in the 1970s, those living legends who followed the tournament circuit and points between. The story is fiction, but the characters are real - only the names have been changed to protect the guilty! Apart from being a rattling good yarn, half the fun is in identifying the cast! Written by the elusive/reclusive "James Clegg", the back-cover blurb says it all:- Uncounted thousands of books have been written about the game of Chess - but this book is not one of them. It is a fable - a fantasy - about the players themelves. Chessplayers are a weird lot: an odd quixotic fellowship, drawn from every country in the world, and from all walks of life. Amongst them you will find every kind of odd-ball, and every kind of ordinary-ball! The reputable as well as the disreputable - the noble and the ignoble - rich man, poor man, tinker. tailor, soldier, sailor - every exotic thread woven into the wonderful tapestry of life. A passion for the ancient game, or more precisely an obsession with it, is the fellow feeling that unites them. If anything divides them, it is the odd fact that every player looks on every other player as a sometime adversary! This quaint tale then is a yarn spun for everyone - the onlookers as well as those others who indulge their obsession; sometimes to the exclusion of all else! "I read the book in one go and thought that it was wonderful. In some places tears of laughter flowed freely (perhaps assisted by Merlot)... The Russian names were wonderful!" Neville Ledger Neville Ledger Chess Centre