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'...

‘… Beautifully choreographed and delivered…’

Thank you to reviewer Rowena Hoseason for her thoughtful and insightful 7/10 review of The Prague Papers; an extract is shown below:

“There’s a nifty twist to this espionage adventure, set behind the Iron Curtain in the mid-1970s. The smart, sexy female protagonist isn’t just a rare survivor from Warsaw’s WW2 ghetto. Nor is she merely a highly skilled covert operative, brought up by the British to be extremely effective against the KGB. Tana Standish has one more thing going for her: psychic talents. There’s nothing outlandish in the psi-spy’s capabilities – they’re neatly underplayed, a talent which isn’t understood or entirely controllable but which frequently tips the odd in her favour.

“This mild shift into the land of ‘maybe’ is carefully contrasted with the grim, grey reality of life in Czechoslovakia in the Seventies, brought to heel seven years earlier by Soviet tanks, its citizens stifled by the relentless brutal mechanisms of an efficient totalitarian regime. An underground resistance cell has been compromised. Tana is assigned to put the network back together and use her special talents to ascertain if comms have been compromised, or worse. The result is a running chase through the back streets and sewers of Prague, where the protagonists barely taste their black bread and spicy sausage between violent and amorous encounters. This isn’t a slow-burn spy story a la Alan Furst where the tension builds over quiet encounters and long railway rides. Instead it’s more of a headlong hurtle through rapid liaisons and botched ops; there’s every opportunity for Tana to show off not just her psi skills but also her street savvy and close-quarters combat.

“For me, the best scenes are the one-on-one confrontations, claustrophobic closed room battles of expert second-guessing. There’s a superb fight sequence which takes place in a pitch-dark living room, where weaponless Tana must defend herself against an armed opponent using her memory, wits, senses and what falls to hand. It’s beautifully choreographed and delivered.

“… preceded by a simply chilling chapter, the best in the book, where Tana must marshal all of her mental strength to resist the worst that her opponents employ against her. I also thoroughly enjoyed the scenes in the Soviet psychic investigations unit. Likewise, the author’s attention to detail in his descriptions of Prague, and Tana’s cracking back-story, were superb….”

***

The review can be read on Amazon UK here

And a longer review can be read on the MurderMayhem&More site here

 

 

FFB - Winter in Madrid

WINTER IN MADRID by C.J. Sansom

Sansom is not strong on good memorable book titles but he’s strong on writing style.

For too many decades, there was a ‘pact of forgetting’ concerning the Spanish Civil War atrocities, not least the forced abduction of thousands of children of Republicans; this book is dedicated to their memory.

Madrid, 1940. The Civil War is over and Spain is struggling to recover. While Hitler rampages throughout Europe, Franco maintains Spain’s neutrality though he and his government are on friendly terms with their fellow fascists.  The British government is understandably concerned about Franco abandoning neutrality. If he should allow the German army into Spain, they would immediately march on Gibraltar and use that stronghold to strangle Allied access to the Mediterranean.

Shell-shocked survivor of Dunkirk, Harry Brett volunteers to become a spy for the Secret Service. The spymasters believe that Harry might prove useful as he knows from his school-days a shady English businessman, Sandy Forsyth, who seems to have the ear of powerful men in Madrid. 

Bernie Piper is another of Harry’s old school acquaintances. Communist supporting Piper went missing during the war in 1937.  Bernie’s girlfriend Barbara Clare had been a Red Cross nurse but she’s now married to Forsyth and is barely coping with the children in the state orphanages.  Then Barbara discovers that Bernie might not be dead, but working in a secret labour camp in the mountains.

The scene is set for several character threads to be intertwined in the traumatised city; indeed, the city itself is almost a living, breathing character thanks to Sansom’s ability to evoke a place and time.

The walls of Madrid had ears after the war. Neighbour against neighbour. It only took a few words of denunciation to have you carted off to a labour camp or even shot.  Harry found love with the tragic Sofia, another victim of the war. He also helped Barbara search for her ex-lover Bernie while she deceived her husband Sandy. And Sandy was not above deception either. 

Every character, no matter how minor, rings true in this book. You feel what they feel. The action scenes are few but they’re depicted with great verve and you’re there with the protagonists, so vital is the writing.

Sansom captures the deprivation and ugliness of modern post-war urban living. It’s squalid and grim, especially in winter. This is an authoritative piece of writing, combining the elements of a thriller, a romance and an historical drama.  The political chicanery, the ideological imperatives and the treacherous double-crosses seem very believable in Sansom’s hands.

These 500-odd pages are turned very quickly because you want to know what happens next and the last few chapters are tense and suspenseful.  After any conflict, there are survivors and they carry the scars for the rest of their lives. The surviving characters in this book are scarred by politicians as much as the violent men with guns. Masterful writing. 

Note. Sansom has enjoyed success with his historical tales about Matthew Shardlake in Tudor times. Recently, he published his alternative history novel Dominion, set in 1952, with the Nazis in power in Britain.

***

 

The short story 'Grave Concerns' featured in the above Spanish Eye collection

is about the 'pact of forgetting' and its tragic consequences today

 

Spanish Eye paperback can be purchased post-free worldwide here

Kindle e-book from Amazon.co.uk here

Kindle e-book from Amazon.com here