The Two-Headed Eagle. The Emperor's Coloured Coat. A Sailor of Austria. Tomorrow the World.

Who could forget these great historical novels by John Biggins?

Everyone, apparently.

How could an English author, writing a series of successful historical novels, published in the US by St. Martin's Press to great acclaim, disappear so completely that not even Google can find him?

The mystery of Mr. Biggins has not yet become an obsession with me, but it's getting close. I have pals in the biz who are helping me search for this author. I have talked with his US editor. I am in touch with British author Jan Needle. Needle is looking through haystacks in England for any trace of Mr. Biggins. No luck.

The Search for John Biggins is worth the effort . It's because his four published books are so intriguing and delightful. Many readers wish there were more.

John Biggins was born in 1949 and grew up in the Welsh border country. He was educated at University College, Swansea, and later spent four years in Poland as a research student and lecturer. Last anyone heard he was married with two children, living on the Essex coast near Colchester, England.

Biggins' first book was A Sailor of Austria. Who knew the Austro-Hungarian Empire ever HAD a navy? The tottering old monarchy was famous as the largest modern land-locked empire. Late in their history the emperor gained access to the Adriatic through Trieste and nearby ports.

As the Austro-Hungarians slowly went to smithereens in the war, they managed to field a tiny navy, a tiny air force, and a tiny submarine service. They had to beg for spare parts from their much more powerful ally, Germany, and the requests got bogged down in the laughably incompetent bureaucracy. It must have been truly horrible in real life. In these novels, it's horrible but funny, too.

Biggin's incomparable lead character is Ottokar Prohaska, a lieutenant in the Navy. Prohaska is loyal and inventive, yet he also sees reality, a clear view invisible to the souls still living out their glorious imperial fantasies. His numerous adventures on sea and land fill these books. They could have filled many more, no doubt.

All four Biggins titles are out of print. You may be able to locate them on the Internet or on the back shelves of used bookstores. I got my copies that way.

Here's a quick description of The Two-Headed Eagle:

"It is the summer of 1916, and Otto, joined by his self-willed aerial chauffeur Sergeant-Pilot Toth, entrusts his life to a series of flimsy biplanes in the sky above war-torn Alpine battlefields. On the ground, the rickety Hapsburg empire has begun its final slide to disaster. And in the air is the unmistakable sense that history, poignant and ironic and always surprising, is erupting all around them."

Recently I corresponded with Cal Morgan, the US editor who originally brought the Biggins novels to American audiences. Cal writes:

"My lament on John Biggins, alas, is probably predictable. Those are awfully, awfully good novels. But they were published within the context of the longstanding St. Martin's small-UK-import fiction program, which always went almost exclusively to libraries, and which it was very hard to break out of with anything short of James Herriot. I made passionate pleas for them but they were unsurprisingly ill-fated, as the Austro-Hungarian Navy never felt as sexy to anyone as Patrick O'Brian's turf. So we tried and tried but sold very few copies, and when the time came to consider trade paper, I have to admit that even I didn't think we could get anywhere in the trade with the books.

"Alas to all of that. He really is a superb writer. But I am gratified to see... reviews of his books... all these years later. I'm thrilled that even a few people here and there have had the same great experience with him I have."

Aired Sunday March 13, 2005 at 10:55 am and Monday March 14, 2005 at 8:40 am

NOTES:

The four John Biggins novels in the Otto Prohaska series: A Sailor of Austria, The Emperor's Coloured Coat, The Double-Headed Eagle, Tomorrow the World.

A lead you may care to follow: http://www.histfiction.net/

Tomorrow the World is the fourth (and last) book Biggins wrote, but chronologically the first: "It is 1902, and Prohaska is a 16-year-old naval cadet embarking on a scientific cruise aboard the steam corvette Windischgraetz. Nothing goes quite to plan and the young hero has a few remarkable adventures of his own."