THE ASSETS - Book review

 THE ASSETS

 

Ted Allbeury is an excellent writer of espionage thrillers, and had written over forty books. This is his take on Operation MK Ultra, which was a CIA mind-control programme. It actually existed, and employed drugs and hypnotism to illegally control unwitting subjects.(A clever cover, showing the timepiece inducing hypnosis).

The story begins in Korea in 1953 with PFC Joe Maguire in charge of released US prisoners-of-war. (The Captain says ‘Good soldiers don’t get taken prisoner’. Remind you of someone?) 

By the time of the US departure from Vietnam in 1975, Maguire is a Lieutenant-colonel. Maguire left the army and took up law, mostly acting for ex-servicemen. He’s then recruited by a Colonel Swenson to liaise between the CIA, the Treasury and the Pentagon. Maguire is a fundamentally decent man, an ideal choice to monitor the goings-on of MK Ultra. 

The trouble with the mind control programme is that its subjects can become confused and irrational, particularly when their controllers abscond or die in an RTA. The story is set mainly in the US.

Alas, the novel reads like a documentary in parts, and covers a lot of ground, but, with the exception of Maguire, we don’t get to know the many characters in any kind of depth. If this was written by an American author it would be twice the length (it’s 308 pages) to pad details about everyone involved. This was Allbeury’s last book, dedicated to ‘my brave and beautiful wife Grazyna Maria who died a few weeks after I finished the book’. Allbeury died in 2005, aged 88.