XPD - Book review

 

In my 1987 copy of Len Deighton’s 1981 novel it reveals it had been reprinted seven times, so it was certainly popular in the 1980s. Along with other Deighton novels, it is being re-issued as a Penguin modern classic. As you can gather from the dates above, I’ve come to it very late indeed.

XPD refers to ‘expedient demise’ – the fate of anyone who knows too much and is a verifiable security risk.

Set in 1979, ostensibly it’s about a projected movie being made concerning the plunder of German gold in the final phases of the Second World War: that’s the McGuffin. However, it is not so much the gold as certain documents that were also sequestered at the time. It’s most odd that these potentially embarrassing items have not surfaced in the intervening thirty-nine years.

The Director General of MI6, Sir Sydney Ryden, is introduced on the first page. But virtually every occasion thereafter he is referred to as ‘the DG’.

Boyd Stuart, a field agent and son-in-law to the DG is tasked with recovering certain secret documents from the stolen items – items that were rumoured to be source material for the film. The documents concern the secret whereabouts of Winston Churchill on June 11, 1940; did he have a meeting with Hitler in an attempt at making peace? Unlikely though it seems.

Stein is an American, ex-Army, one of a group who purloined the gold and vital documents, and all lived well off the proceeds. Somebody, doubtless for political reasons, wants those documents released to create a wedge between the US and Great Britain. It has to be the Russians… There are now a string of deaths connected with the documents…

The best bits were the flashbacks to the war itself, with Stein. Deighton’s extensive knowledge of the German forces was evident also.

There is a twist at the end concerning ‘the DG’, which is sort of left hanging.

The storyline is unnecessarily complex, but can be followed, even with several protagonists involved. The chase amidst the Hollywood stage setting was probably overdone even in the 1980s and seems contrived here. Sadly, for me, it didn’t hang together, despite my enjoyment of Deighton’s style and amusing asides.

Editorial comments:

On p210 a man with a half-grown beard introduces himself as Jimmy on p211.  Next page, we have ‘Here’s your Mr Stein,’ said the bearded man.

(Why revert to ‘the bearded man when we now know him as Jimmy?)

On p212, there is another man. ‘The man at the stove… offered his hand.’ Four lines further down, we have ‘Jimmy is a communications engineer,’ explained Paul Bock, the man at the stove.’

(Why use ‘the man at the stove again when he could have been introduced as Bock earlier?

Blame the editor.

Hear, hear!

I was looking forward to watching the 5-part dramatization of Len Deighton’s 1978 novel, SS-GB, which I’d read and enjoyed many years ago. 

Unfortunately, the BBC chose to schedule it in conflict with an ITV series I’m already watching, The Good Karma Hospital. The BBC does this a lot; it doesn’t need to, since it isn’t really competing for paying viewers (or advertising space). So, I consoled myself with the thought that I’d eventually buy the DVD of SS-GB.

Now, I might not bother. There have been so many reports from a variety of sources that the director is an advocate of the Mumbling School of Drama. I won't surrender!

Considering this series is likened to a noir detective drama, I’d have thought the director would have seen the old noir movies featuring Bogart, Mitchum, O’Brien, Lake, Cagney, Robinson, Raft, Lorre, and Duryea to name a few. These had atmosphere, but also good diction (even when mangled American!), and the music never smothered the dialogue.

This is only the latest example of a number of recent productions that I have decided not to watch. I recall some time ago watching an episode of the new Dr Who; at a critical juncture, the good Doctor was making a dramatic announcement, but it was drowned out by the foreground music. I gave up on that series.

SS-GB is directed by Philipp Kadelbach and stars several German actors who spoke their native language on set and on screen, with subtitles. Great authenticity. Interestingly, some viewers commented that they found it easier to understand the Germans than anyone mumbling in English. A number had to resort to subtitles to comprehend what was being mumbled by the English-speakers.

The day after the transmission, a BBC spokesman said they “will look at the sound levels on the programme in time for the next episode.” You’d have thought that somebody might have considered doing that before transmission, considering that there have been other mumbling issues for the BBC involving Jamaica Inn, the crime series Quirke, and Happy Valley.

There’s no issue with other series, such as Game of Thrones, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and Murdoch Mysteries, for example, all of which have dark themes and an international cast; even the Dothraki is intelligible in Game of Thrones!

At least I can hear what all the international cast of actors are saying in The Good Karma Hospital. That’s good karma, indeed.

Spies and more spies

Last night BBC4 TV aired the final part of Andrew Marr’s series on genre paperback fiction – Sleuths, Spies and Sorcerers. (See my earlier blog here).

This time it was the turn of the spies.

We visited Berlin, the remnants of the Wall, the prison where betrayed agents were incarcerated and tortured physically and mentally, and glimpsed old images of traitors such as Blake and Philby. All grist to the mill for John Le Carré’s breakthrough novel The Spy Who came in from the Cold. An old interview revealed that he wasn’t surprised that no communists liked his spy tales!

Another interview was with Frederick Forsyth; we’re shown film clips from The Day of the Jackal, whose protagonist was not a spy but an assassin; the point was that both Le Carré and Forsyth, along with several other scribes of this genre had some background in intelligence work. One of the first of these was Somerset Maugham (notably Ashenden), who confessed that looking back on his fiction he found it difficult to separate fact from fiction in his work.

 Maugham's Ashenden

Perhaps too much attention was given to the (admittedly interesting) William Le Queux’ popular sensationalist novel The Invasion of 1910 (1906) regarding a fictional account of a German armed invasion of Britain. The furore following its publication prompted the setting up of a British secret intelligence department, The Secret Service Bureau headed by Mansfield Smith-Cumming in 1909.

Other interviewees were Stella Rimington, a former director general of MI5 and author of the MI5 officer Liz Carlyle books, author Charles Cumming who has written eight spy novels since 2001, an early snippet from Len Deighton, and William Boyd who wrote a new Bond novel, Solo (reviewed here.

Other authors who are examined include (inevitably) Ian Fleming, Gerald Seymour, John Buchan, Graham Greene, and Eric Ambler, with intriguing interpretations and motivations.

Quite rightly, Marr states that he is annoyed at the literary snobbery with regard to spy fiction and genre fiction in general. It’s as if being “popular” is anathema.

At their best, spy novels delve into the dark recesses of the human condition, examining the repercussions of betrayal, corruption and deceit. 

Despite the high-tech surveillance in the present, there is still a place for the human spy.

As in the earlier two episodes, there were bound to be some deserving authors omitted, among them Adam Hall (Elleston Trevor), author of the Quiller books, Erskine Childers (The Riddle of the Sands), Dennis Wheatley (Gregory Sallust novels), Helen MacInnes, Alan Furst, David Downing, Desmond Cory (Johnny Fedora series), Colin Forbes (Tweed series), John Gardner (Railton family series, Bond), and Craig Thomas (Aubrey & Hyde series), among others!

The programme is re-broadcast on BBC4 TV tomorrow, Wednesday evening. The series is also linked to the Open University - see here

where you can 'dig deeper into crime, fantasy and spy fiction'...

Writing – research – espionage, brainwashing

Maintaining the theme of the Cold War, I thought it appropriate to take a very brief look at brainwashing employed in espionage. This is a massive, controversial subject and has its place in both the real world of spies and in fiction. In The Prague Papers, my heroine Tana Standish is put in harm’s way and her psychic abilities are in jeopardy through mind-bending techniques.

Sensory deprivation

Early MI6 studies at Porton Down of administering LSD to subjects, often serving volunteer personnel, suggested that not only was the drug mind-altering but it tended to impose sensory deprivation on the subject. MI6’s LSD experiments ran from the early 1950s; eventually, its used became recreational, fuelling the counter-culture movements of the 1960s.

There were other sensory deprivation techniques, notably immersing a subject completely in water – with breathing apparatus; they’re blindfolded, their ears are covered, and there is no light whatsoever.

At the end of such sessions, individuals were not capable of making decisions and open to suggestion. The mainstream novel The Mindbenders by James Kennaway (1963) concerns the scientists involved in these experiments. ‘We want to know what happens to him if he sees nothing, feels nothing, tastes nothing, hears nothing, and smells nothing. We want to know what happens to the body and particularly to the Central Nervous System when a man is put into complete isolation…’ – p34. It’s an engrossing human story, and quite moving too.

The book became a film in the same year and starred Dirk Bogarde and Mary Ure.

My ex-library copy lost some of its lettering for some odd reason!

 

Reprinted in 2014

 

One of the most famous novels that uses this isolation technique is The Ipcress File by Len Deighton (1962). ‘… the water tank… You mask the subject’s eyes and fit him with breathing apparatus, then suspend him face down in a tank of blood heat water… completely disorientated and subject to anxiety and hallucination…’ – p203.  In short, suggestible.

 

 

FFB - The Leader

This 2003 thriller by Guy Walters falls into the ‘what if’ alternative history’ category of fiction. This kind of story goes a long way back – to the late 1800s. More modern examples are Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee (1953) where the South won the Civil War and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) where the Allies lost WWII. British variants include novels where Hitler won, such as Len Deighton’s SSGB (1978), Murray Davies’ Collaborator (2003), Robert Harris’ Fatherland (1992) and the Soviet’s take over Britain, such as Constantine Fitzgibbon’s When the Kissing had to Stop (1960), and Clive Egleton’s A Piece of Resistance (1970), and S.J. Sansom’s Dominion (2012). Sophia McDougall's Romanitas, the first of a trilogy, is a contemporary novel where the Roman empire didn't fall but dominates half the world. There are plenty of others, of course.

In the case of The Leader, in 1936 Edward VIII defied all advice and opinion and refused to give up his throne or Mrs Simpson. Political turmoil resulted and into the vacuum stepped the pro-monarchy group, Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists – renamed the British Union. In 1937 Mosley was in power and had the tacit support of the pro-fascist king and his wife.

Within weeks of Mosley walking into No.10, the Emergency Powers were invoked by Parliament and a nationwide curfew was installed. They ended the right of assembly and His Majesty’s Secret State Police was set up to ‘combat anti-patriotic activities’ and to take over the work of MI5. Identity papers were introduced and the press was taken over by the state and absorbed into the civil service.

Of course all these measures were ‘temporary – for the good of us all.’ Mosley’s Blackshirts caused terror wherever they went, fomenting racial unrest, notably against Jews. Mosley even consults his fascist pal Adolf Hitler on a ‘more permanent’ solution to the ‘Jewish problem’.  

The first manifestation of this dictatorship was the plethora of posters of Mosley – in his Blackshirt uniform – ‘The Leader – For the Good of Us All.’ The cult of personality rising above policy.

Like all regimes of terror, this one was run by thugs of doubtful intelligence. There were ways round the system, ways to fight back. The populace wasn’t completely cowed, it just needed a few well-placed leaders. Unfortunately, old Winston Churchill was a prisoner in the Isle of Man.

First World War hero James Armstrong, now an MP, soon realised that this was not the Britain he’d fought for in the trenches. He started meeting friends of like mind – until he was arrested, having been betrayed. Armstrong learned that you couldn’t trust anybody anymore. That was the state’s invisible power - distrust spreading like a malignant tumour – and what kept the Soviets in power for so long.

But Armstrong escaped and with cunning and bravery links up with some communists to fight back at the authoritarian government.

The story is convincing on several levels and moves along at a good pace. I was reminded of Buchan’s Thirty-nine Steps – it seems as though every hand is turned against the hero, he can’t trust anyone. And unknown to Armstrong, there are behind-the-scenes manipulations going on, engineered by Russian moles ...

 
The select bibliography cites nineteen books concerning, Mosley, Fascism in Britain, the 1930s, the Windsors and the Russians – research all used to good effect without slowing the pace or appearing didactic.
 
Of course much of the background is based on fact – Mosley was quite powerful in his day and the king held pro-fascist views. Indeed, this was a historical turning-point – the king abdicated in order to marry the American Mrs Simpson.
 
It’s possible that it could have happened like this. And just because the story takes place in 1937, it doesn’t mean Britain is now forever free of a dictatorship...
 

Book list-1965

For many years now, I’ve kept a list of the books I’ve read.  In the 1980s, I used to review books for the British Science Fiction Association, and in the 1990s also for my semi-pro magazine Auguries. Then when I discovered the Internet, I continued to write reviews on Amazon. Looking back, it seems I started in 1965.

Then, I simply listed the book. Now, I show the book, the author and the date read.

I won’t present a full list, which might become tedious, but show a few selected titles, just for interest.

1965

Fittingly, I read Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End in October, 1965 on the fourteen-hour train journey to join the Royal Navy. That same year, I also read Len Deighton’s Horse Under Water, which began at HMS Vernon, the naval diving school. My first draft in the following year after training was to HMS St. Vincent, in Gosport, across the water from Vernon.

 

I enjoyed E.V. Cunningham’s Sylvia, actually written by Howard Fast, an excellent suspense novel that deserves to be reprinted; it was the first in an unconnected series, save that all the books had women’s names, such as Shirley, Phyllis, Lydia etc.

 

Winston Graham’s Marnie was much better than the Hitchcock film; his characters are always believable. Since then, I’ve read most of the Poldark novels and many of his suspense novels; he never disappoints.

I read a few true wartime exploit books too – The White Rabbit (Bruce Marshall, writing the exploits of Yeo-Thomas), Boldness be my Friend (Richard Pape) and The Colditz Story (P.R. Reid) – all excellent books about real heroes.

 

Some years earlier I’d read quite a few similar titles, such as Odette, Carve Her Name With Pride, the Cockleshell Heroes, the Dambusters et al. Richard Pape wrote an espionage novel Arm Me Audacity, which reads as though it was true, not fiction. Of additional interest is this thread:

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?68113-quot-Boldness-Be-My-friend-quot-by-Richard-Pape-a-pack-of-lies

I particularly enjoyed Ray Bradbury’s The Silver Locusts, alternatively titled The Martian Chronicles; a visionary and a poet at work. I still possess all his paperbacks, most of them the 1960s Corgi versions.

I was – and still am – a fan of Victor Canning, and his The Limbo Line didn’t disappoint. In those days I bought and read a lot of espionage thrillers – there seemed to be a great many around. One series I enjoyed featured Commander Shaw, by Philip McCutcheon, and in this year I read his Bluebolt 1 adventure.

 

For a few years prior to this, I’d discovered Dennis Wheatley, first his Duke de Richleau series (a few years earlier, my first foray was, prophetically, Vendetta in Spain), then Gregory Sallust; in this year, I read The Forbidden Territory and The Devil Rides Out, both landmark books for Wheatley.

 

The Forbidden Territory was Wheatley’s first published novel (1933) and introduced his modern trinity of musketeers in the epicurean Duke de Richleau, financier Simon Aron, and the wealthy young American, Rex Van Ryn. Happily, Bloomsbury is reprinting all of Wheatley’s books – www.bloomsbury.com/DennisWheatley

The Devil Rides Out (1934) was his second Richleau tale and his first black magic novel, which has become a classic of its kind (the recently released Kindle version is currently #1 in Horror and Occult categories, and #2 for Fiction Classics).

Wheatley’s point of view was generally omniscient when it suited the scene or third person when emotional conflict was necessary; though when the story called for it, he used first person narrative too (notably The Haunting of Toby Jugg). These books are two of his best adventures. The emphasis is on ‘adventure’; he wrote no-nonsense yet thoroughly researched thrillers with heaps of tension.

Another time, I’ll take a look at some books I read in 1966 – almost half a century ago!