Now this is rather exciting. Crime writer and thriller aficionado Mike Ripley has announced the publication next year of "a readers' history", as Mike himself puts it, of "the boom in British thrillers" from 1953–1975. Titled Not Single Spies, the book takes as its starting point Ian Fleming's debut Bond novel Casino Royale (1953) and its end point Jack Higgins' The Eagle Has Landed (1975), featuring along the way the likes of Alistair MacLean, Desmond Bagley, John le Carre and Frederick Forsyth, and drawing on discussions Mike has had over the years with such luminaries as Len Deighton, Anthony Price, Alan Williams and Gavin Lyall.
Set to be published by Harper Collins on 18 May 2017, Not Single Spies also boasts a foreword by Lee Child, who, when approached to write the foreword, apparently noted that he knew: "It would be a book I would want to read – maybe even pay for!" I couldn't agree more.
What is it?
The first American paperback edition – at least under its original title – of Ian Fleming's debut James Bond novel, Casino Royale, published by Signet/New American Library in 1960.
Where and when did I buy it?
At the Lewes Book Fair, last year.
Why did I buy it?
I spotted it on the table of a dealer who was new to the Lewes Book Fair and couldn't resist it, despite already owning British Pan and Panther paperbacks of the novel. In my experience it's unusual to come across vintage US paperbacks at British book fairs, so that was one reason for picking it up; plus there's that great Barye Phillips cover. Furthermore, this 1960 Signet printing represents the first time Casino Royale appeared in paperback in the US under that title; previously it had been published in paperback under the title You Asked for It by Popular Library in 1955.
No, your eyes do not deceive you: that is another 1974 Hodder first edition/first impression of John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy far left, which I've listed for auction on eBay along with a 1965 Cape hardback first edition/first impression of Kingsley Amis's The James Bond Dossier, a 1966 Pan paperback first printing of Ian Fleming's The Man with the Golden Gun and a signed 2013 Penguin/Viking first edition/first impression of John le Carré's A Delicate Truth. I make no excuses for listing a first of Tinker, Tailormere weeks after listing another copy; I've documented the insanity which characterises my book collecting multiple times on Existential Ennui, so my having come into possession of more than one copy of this book – and indeed more than one copy of one or two others of the books that I'm selling – even given its/their scarcity, is entirely in keeping with the madness of Sun King Louis XIV.
Three of the books I've listed have featured in some capacity on Existential Ennui previously, with the exception of the Pan paperback of The Man with the Golden Gun, although since that now appears in this post, it's accurate to state that it too now appears on Existential Ennui – if that has any bearing on relative desirability, which I sincerely doubt. However, all four books – something of a spy fiction bonanza – are highly collectable, fairly uncommon and in rather nice condition.
Click through from either of those links to the individual listings for more information about each book – condition, starting price and so forth – but feel free to ask questions both here (my email address can be found in the sidebar) and on eBay if you're at all interested in any of them.
The Eric Ambler introduction in this anthology of three of the author's novels isn't quite as expansive as that in the 1964 short story (both Ambler's and others') anthology To Catch a Spy, but it's still worth a look, I feel, if only for the amusing way in which Ambler persistently undermines the reasoning for the inclusion of the introduction. And in any case, this little-seen edition of the book is itself quite intriguing – literally, in fact.
Published in hardback in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton in 1965, Intrigue collects three of Ambler's novels: The Mask of Dimitrios (1939), Journey into Fear (1940) and Judgment on Deltchev (1951). As such, it should not be confused with Intrigue, published in hardback in the US by Alfred A. Knopf in 1943 – and reissued in 1960 – which collects four of Ambler's novels: Journey into Fear, A Coffin for Dimitrios – the American title for The Mask of Dimitrios – Cause for Alarm (1938) and Background to Danger – the American title for Uncommon Danger (1937).
Now, on balance, one might suppose that an anthology containing four early Eric Ambler spy thrillers would be a more attractive proposition than one containing three early(ish) Eric Ambler spy thrillers. But in this case, to my mind, matters are not so clear cut. For one thing, the Hodder version of Intrigue is much scarcer than the Knopf one, of which there are, presently, getting on for forty copies of the 1943 or (more commonly) 1960 edition on AbeBooks, as opposed to just two copies of the Hodder Intrigue. (My copy, incidentally, came from the basement of Camilla's secondhand bookshop in Eastbourne, bought for a fiver.) More importantly, however, there's the introduction. In the Knopf edition(s) it's by Alfred Hitchcock, whereas in the Hodder edition it's by Ambler himself. I haven't read Hitchcock's introduction in the Knopf Intrigue, but having read his typically glib one for his own Sinister Spies anthology, I can't imagine it's terribly insightful. Ambler's, on the other hand, though only four pages long, is revealing about the origins of each novel, agreeably anecdotal, and winningly self-deprecating about the business of writing introductions.
Having stated that "no writer of popular fiction should ever attempt to discuss or explain his own books; he should let them speak for themselves", Ambler then presents his excuse for ignoring his own advice: "It is – and already it begins to sound feeble – the fact that these books were written under three entirely different sets of circumstances, and that they seem now – as if it mattered – to reflect their times of origin." Of The Mask of Dimitrios he notes that it "was written during the nominal peace that followed the Munich agreement of 1938" and "was, inauspiciously, the Daily Mail Book-Of-The-Month for August 1939". He recalls how he "thought of the whole shape and plan... in a third-class compartment of the night train from Paris to Marseille" – the seat being "too hard for sleep" – and "made notes on a scrap of paper. They consisted of a rough sketch of Europe with a squiggly line drawn across it, and the words, 'begin Turkey – end Paris – Demetrius? Dimitrios'."
After musing that "[m]ost writers are familiar with the letter from the complete stranger who claims to recognise in a fictional character a thinly disguised (and, usually, libellous) portrait of himself", Ambler reveals that "The Mask of Dimitrios produced a considerable correspondence". There was the "Greek living in Wichita, Kansas who declared furiously, and with notable lack of filial consideration, that the odious Dimitrios was an obvious portrait of his father"; the French journalist who was convinced Dimitrios was based on a living Greek criminal (of whom Ambler had never heard); and the man in Argentina who sent "ten closely-written pages... in an awkward mixture of bad English and German" claiming that he had found in the novel "clear evidence of the manner of his father's death in the early thirties".
"Unfortunately," Ambler adds, "he neglected to mention which of the book's characters he had identified as his father."
Like The Mask of Dimitrios, Journey into Fear "was also evolved in a train" – this time "[s]tanding in the packed corridor of an express which stopped at every station between Lyon and Paris", although Ambler "made no notes on that occasion. As everyone seemed certain at that point that we were all going to be bombed or gassed at any moment, note-making scarcely seemed worthwhile." The book "was written while I was waiting to go into the army during the 'phony' War. It was the Evening Standard book choice for the month of Dunkirk." In a footnote Ambler muses: "An earlier book of mine, Cause for Alarm, had been published in the week of Hitler's invasion of Austria. The recurrent international crises of the pre-War period seemed to follow the Spring-Autumn publishing pattern relentlessly, and the book casualties were always heavy. Few persons are in the mood for thrillers when the sky is falling." He further expresses surprise that "I, who had an original (1917) drawing of Will Dyson's [Merchant of Death] monster hanging on the wall by my desk, should so readily have decided that the object of the reader's sympathy and concern in Journey into Fear could be an arms salesman."
Judgment on Deltchev was written ten years after Journey into Fear, "after six years in the army and an embroilment
with the film industry". For Ambler, "novel-writing had been a laboriously-acquired habit. In the army I lost the habit, and the process of recovery was slow." That process took place at a house in St. Margaret's Bay in Kent, leased from Noel Coward on the condition "that I should use the house in which to write another book". "Forget all this film nonsense," Coward told Ambler: "You think you will always be able to go back to the well. That may be so, but remember this; if you stay away too long, one day you will go back and find the well dry!" The house's previous tenant had been Ian Fleming, "then about to embark upon his series of James Bond adventures. Obviously the house and its landlord were together conducive to work in the genre."
Ambler rewrote Judgment on Deltchev "at least five times" and "started and discarded three other books during those years": not only did he have to reacquire "the writing habit" but "the internal world which had confidently produced the earlier books had been so extensively modified that it had to be re-explored".
He continues:
If this sounds unduly solemn from a thriller-writer with the sole and avowed object of providing entertainment, then perhaps I may quote Ian Fleming on the subject: 'While thrillers may not be Literature, it is possible to write what I can best describe as "thrillers designed to be read as literature".' Such an aim would surely excuse a measure of solemnity and some critical self-examination.
"On reflection, however," Ambler offers in closing, "I think that perhaps I was right in the first place. It really is better to let the books speak for themselves."
Before I move on from Eric Ambler – whose work, by the way, Ethan Iverson will also shortly be exploring over at Do the Math – I thought I might showcase a couple of Ambler first editions, both of which I acquired on London's Cecil Court.
Like Alfred Hitchcock's Sinister Spies(Max Reindhart, 1967), the second short spy story anthology I'm reviewing this week also boasts a Calder and Behrens story by Michael Gilbert, an Ashenden story by W. Somerset Maugham and a story by Eric Ambler. In this instance, however, the anthology was also compiled by Ambler, who provides a much more thorough introduction than Hitchcock's genially superficial one for Sinister Spies, as well as introductions to each individual tale.
To Catch a Spy was published by The Bodley Head in 1964 under a terrific typographical dust jacket designed by Michael Harvey (which I've added to the Existential Ennui Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s page). I bought this copy a year or two ago for £7.50 – not a bad price for a first edition, the only real defects being some light wear on the wrapper and foxing on the page edges. I must admit that as with Alfred Hitchcock's Sinister Spies it was the wrapper that initially attracted me, and I was only prompted to read the book more recently when, in the wake of returning to Michael Gilbert's Calder and Behrens spy stories, I took a closer look at Sinister Spies and found myself unexpectedly moved by the Maugham story therein: "The Traitor", taken from Maugham's 1928 collection of linked stories Ashenden, or, The British Agent. Realising that there was another Ashenden tale in To Catch a Spy, I headed directly for it.
That "Giulia Lazzari" is every bit as remarkable as "The Traitor" will, I'm sure, come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Maugham's original book. I don't number myself among them – not yet; I'll be rectifying that soon – but the elegance and clarity of the prose is plain for all to see, and the story is at least as affecting as that of "The Traitor", perhaps more so.
We learn a little more about cultured World War I master spy Ashenden in "Giulia Lazzari" than in "The Traitor": that he is a popular and successful novelist and playwright, a useful cover for his covert career working for Britain's secret service; that he runs a network of spies in Germany, paying their wages and forwarding on to R., his British Intelligence boss, whatever information they obtain. R. himself also features more prominently: there's a long scene set in a Parisian hotel where R. briefs Ashenden on his latest mission, during which R.'s imperialist, colonialist, even racist views become clear – views which are hard to stomach not only for the modern reader but seemingly for Ashenden as well.
Of course, whatever admiration Ashenden might have for his intended target – anti-British rule agitator Chandra Lal, an Indian who has allied himself with Germany – is of no consequence; as he tells R.: "He's declared war and he must take his chance." To that end Ashenden attempts to lure Chandra to the French side of Lake Geneva – and thus his doom – using Chandra's Italian lover, dancer and occasional prostitute Giulia Lazzari, as bait. How he does so is a vivid illustration of the heartless nature of the spymaster, who must ride roughshod over the emotions and feelings of those caught in his firing line in order to achieve his aims. As the story unfolds you remind yourself that there is a point to this cruelty, that a war is raging across Europe; but even so, one wonders whether the ends really justify the means.
In his introduction to "Giulia Lazzari", Eric Ambler notes that though the most popular Ashenden stories are probably "The Hairless Mexican", "The Traitor" and "Mr Harrington's Washing", "Giulia Lazzari" "...is the episode that I most enjoy re-reading. The preliminary scenes with R. are a perennial delight, and Madame Lazzari is so vividly presented that you can almost see the pores of her skin. It is an ugly story, but a highly satisfying one." In his introduction to To Catch a Spy as a whole, Ambler readily admits that his own early books were strongly influenced by Ashenden – "the first fictional work on the subject [espionage] by a writer of stature with first-hand knowledge of what he is writing about" – and "that there has been no body of work in the field of the same quality written since Ashenden" – high praise indeed from such an aficionado, not to mention the author of such notable spy novels himself as Epitaph for a Spy, The Mask of Dimitrios, Passage of Arms and others.
Ambler's To Catch a Spy introduction is fascinating for the way it details not merely the history of espionage writing but the history of espionage itself. He notes: "There seems to have been no period in recorded history when secret agents have not played a part... in political and military affairs. And yet, it is impossible to find any spy story of note written before the twentieth century." (As a reason for this he points to "the Dreyfus case (1894–99)... not so much on its having created a new public appetite or whetted an unfamiliar curiosity, as on the fact that it re-opened a discussion which had been firmly closed for nearly a hundred years.") Drawing a line from Erskine Childers's The Riddle of the Sands (1903) – "the first spy novel" – to Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907) – "the first attempt by a major novelist to deal realistically with the secret war, with the sub-world of conspiracy, sabotage, double-dealing and betrayal" – to William Le Quex and E. Phillips Oppenheim, Ambler arrives at John Buchan (The Thirty-Nine Steps, 1915) and the other authors he has selected for his anthology.
And what a selection: Buchan, Somerset Maugham, Compton Mackenzie, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, Michael Gilbert and Ambler himself – that's one hell of a dinner party guest-list – all represented by some of their best work. Buchan's "The Loathly Opposite" is a fine tale of two cryptographers on opposing sides in World War I, while Ian Fleming steps up with "From a View to a Kill" (Taken from For Your Eyes Only, 1960), in which James Bond untangles a deadly plot to intercept British Secret Service communiques in France. Ambler makes note of Fleming/Bond's "shrewd and constructive... account of the difficulties of deciding what to drink in a Paris cafe" (Bond settles on "an Americano—bitter Campari, Cinzano, a large slice of lemon peel, and soda"), but adds: "Critics rarely remark on how well written the James Bond stories are. I suppose that with a man as civilized and amusing as Mr Fleming, good writing is taken for granted."
Ashenden aside, Ambler reserves special praise for Compton Mackenzie's long-out-of-print The Three Couriers (1929), from which he extracts "The First Courier". Personally I couldn't get on with it; perhaps I simply wasn't in the mood for Mackenzie's brand of, as Ambler puts it "light-hearted... absurdity and farce". Much more to my liking was Graham Greene's succinct "I Spy", which I'd read once before in Greene and his brother Hugh's The Spy's Bedside Book (1957) but which was well worth revisiting – as indeed was Michael Gilbert's excellent "On Slay Down", which I originally read in the Calder and Behrens collection Game Without Rules.
From his own fiction Ambler picks an episode from The Mask of Dimitrios (1939), declaring that "I have never written any short spy stories". I'm afraid I only skimmed over this, for the simple reason that I have every intention of reading the full novel at some point, probably in the edition I'll be blogging about next – another anthology, this time of Ambler's own work, again boasting an Ambler introduction.
From a signed political memoir sent to me as a gift by my friend and fellow blogger Book Glutton, next in this series of posts on signed editions, a book which may well be of interest to Book Glutton, by an author who's currently writing a Bond novel...
This is the British first edition/first impression of William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise, published by Bloomsbury earlier this year. Boyd's eleventh novel, the reason this particular copy might be of interest to Book Glutton is because BG is a big fan of Boyd's work, and so he'll hopefully appreciate this:
The author's signature on the title page. I bought this copy on publication from Firsts in Print, but I must admit I haven't yet read it – in fact I've still only read one William Boyd novel: his 2009 thriller Ordinary Thunderstorms, which I liked a lot. I did, however, find a cheap first of his 2006 spy novel Restless in Bookworms in Shoreham the other week, so I'm more likely to try that ahead of Waiting for Sunrise, even though the latter does apparently feature elements of espionage. (Book Glutton, if you're reading this, and if you've read Waiting for Sunrise, do please share your thoughts on it in the comments.)
Speaking of espionage, in April of this year William Boyd was announced as the writer of the next official James Bond novel, following in the footsteps of Sebastian Faulks and Jeffery Deaver. Book Glutton expressed his disappointment at the news in this post, reasoning that Boyd writing a new Bond novel meant that he wouldn't be writing a new Boyd novel, but I'm actually cautiously optimistic, as Boyd's Bond book, unlike Deaver's (Carte Blanche, 2011, which I didn't get on with at all), will be period, i.e. set in 1969, which would place it just post-Colonel Sun, Kingsley Amis's rather good 1968 pseudonymous contribution to the Bond literary canon. Even more promisingly, Boyd cites perhaps the best of Ian Fleming's original novels, From Russia, with Love, as his favourite Bond novel. Given that Ian Fleming Publications seem intent on adding to the literary Bond's adventures, Boyd strikes me as an interesting choice to pen a Bond novel, particularly one that's set to be published in 2013, the sixtieth anniversary of Bond's debut in Casino Royale.
And of course before that, there's this:
Anyway, enough of all this Bonding. There'll be more signed editions soon, many of them by authors who are firm favourites here on Existential Ennui. Ahead of those, though: a Westlake Score-and-review...
For the grand finale of this series of posts on spy novelist Jeremy Duns – whose third spy thriller starring British double-agent Paul Dark, The Moscow Option, was published in the UK on Thursday (it'll be out in the States on 29 May in an omnibus edition alongside the first two Paul Dark novels) – something rather special: an exclusive Q&A with Mr. Duns. The interview was conducted over email earlier this week, and those familiar with Existential Ennui will doubtless be unsurprised to learn that the questions are very much books-orientated – partly because books – reading, collecting, publishing – are indeed the focus of this blog – and Jeremy is, after all, an author – but also because I believe that what we read as a child and what we read as adults can offer insights into who we are as people. In that respect, then, I feel Jeremy's answers are quite revealing, as he discusses the books he read as a kid, his schooldays, and where and how he discovered spy fiction.
But we also examine the Paul Dark novels, along with where Jeremy writes, how he writes, the music he listens to whilst writing, and his research for his books – and not only that, but Jeremy kindly provided some specially photographed shots of his book collection, which you'll see dotted about the interview. So, without further ado – except to say thank you to Jeremy for being so forthcoming and generous with his time – on with the interview...
NICK JONES: What is your earliest reading memory? Either being read to, or reading for yourself?
JEREMY DUNS: My earliest reading memory is of my mother reading me I See Sam
and Dr, Seuss books. She was an English teacher so she was keen to teach
me to read early. My earliest memory of reading for myself is
discovering a cupboard at home that had boxes of spare books from my
mother's class. One box was filled with pristine copies of a book called
Emil and the Detectives, and I took it out and sat on the carpet and
read through the whole thing,
entranced. I don't remember much about the book except for that feeling
of being swept away in a story, and wanting to read more as a result.
Can you recall the first book you bought yourself? Or at least the earliest one you can remember – what it was, where you bought it, why you bought it?
I feel I should remember this, but I don't. It might have been Curtain
by Agatha Christie. When I was eleven or twelve I started reading Christie's
novels because my parents had a few, and I quickly became addicted to
them and began seeking them out. I've never been a book collector, but
at that age I was determined to read all of Christie's work, and she had
written dozens of books. I didn't read all of them, but I read all of
the Marples and Poirots, and Curtain was the last Poirot to read. I loved Christie's twists, and Curtain didn't disappoint.
I did a lot of my reading as a kid at the local public library. I know you grew up in Nigeria and Malaysia and so forth, but I believe you went to boarding school in England. Did you have access to a library? Were you an avid reader?
I was a total bookworm as a boy – I had enormous round glasses and
looked like Harry Potter. I went to prep school at eight, a place called
Horris Hill in Berkshire, and one of its alumni is Richard Adams. I
remember being told that the seeds of Watership Down had been
sown at the school when he told other boys stories about the rabbits on
the nearby down after lights out in his dormitory. I didn't tell stories
after lights out, but I did read long into the night with my torch
under my blanket, usually things like Jennings and Darbishire and Just William,
then Agatha Christie when I got a little older. At thirteen I went to
Winchester – after I'd talked at great length in my interview about
Hercule Poirot – and there was a library in the boarding house that
seemed to have stepped out of Tom Brown's Schooldays. It had a
copy of that book, which I read, as well as P. G. Wodehouse, John Buchan
and dozens of comic legal thrillers by Henry Cecil, which I chomped
through. It also had several paperbacks with distinctive yellow spines
and the name of the writer in thick black lettering: Dennis Wheatley. I
was too young for his occult stuff, and have never really been
interested in horror anyway, but I loved his Gregory Sallust spy
thrillers, despite their rather dubious politics. I reread them a few
years ago and it was like travelling back in time to my fifteeen-year-old
self.
Incidentally, I thought it was interesting that Song of Treason, your second Paul Dark thriller, hinges in part on a past, painful humiliation at boarding school. Was that informed by personal experience?
I don't have much in common with Paul Dark – I can't kill someone with
my bare hands, even if they're guilty of plagiarism. But I realized when
writing Free Agent that his background would most likely mean
he went to a public school. As I went to one, I thought it made sense to
capitalize on that and use what I knew about its peculiar ways and
customs to bring him more to life. I enjoyed my schooldays, but I was
fascinated by aspects of it, such as the power prefects held – I
remember there was a rumour that under the previous housemaster the
prefects had occasionally run amok and destroyed people's possessions
overnight. I watched Another Country at school, and felt that the
basic dynamics of life in such a place hadn't changed for decades. I
didn't realize until years later that Julian Mitchell had gone to
Winchester, so there were probably reasons it seemed so familiar.
When
it came to Song of Treason, I thought it wouldn't be too
difficult to insert some of my knowledge into an earlier era without it
seeming anachronistic – it had already seemed anachronistic when I
experienced it. My own Notions test was unremarkable, but it had quite a
build-up, which I suppose is vital with any initiation ceremony. You
heard, and imagined, all sorts of things. The parts about waiting in the
library in his dressing-gown and being disoriented as he is led around
the house are from my own memories. Much of the rest is imagined, and
some is from hearing others' experiences. There was an incident with
someone getting Deep Heat in his eyes, and although it wasn't damaging
in the long term, at the time it seemed monumental. I tried to take
these experiences and make them real for Paul Dark and the other
characters in an earlier time, in a
more dramatic way. The idea of someone carrying over humiliation at
school into adult life is not uncommon in thrillers (or perhaps life),
but I thought the 'local knowledge' I had would make it more vivid and
interesting. Although it might not get me invited back for Sports' Day.
While we're on the subject of Song of Treason: you also put Paul Dark through a torture sequence, in the grand tradition of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale, Len Deighton's The Ipcress File, Adam Hall's (alias Elleston Trevor) The Berlin Memorandum and others. Bit of a weird question, but were you keen to have your own torture sequence in one of your novels? And how do you think your one stacks up?
There's a great conversation between Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming
that was broadcast by the BBC in 1958, in which a rather sozzled
Chandler asked Fleming why his novels always included a torture scene.
Fleming replied that he grew up reading Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu and
Sapper's Bulldog Drummond, and that in those stories it was traditional
for the villain to capture the hero and drug him or make him suffer in
one way or another. My first exposure to this sort of scene was in
Dennis Wheatley's Sallust novels, where there's a recurring villain, a
senior Gestapo officer called Grauber, and the torture scenes were often
horrific. I had written an interrogation of sorts towards the end of Free Agent,
but I thought it was time I had a proper spy thriller torture scene. It
fitted into some of my research about the political situation in Italy
at the time, but I
also felt that a torture sequence that played with public school
initiation ceremonies would make sense for the novel. I'm proud of the
scene, but I don't think it compares to the ones in those three books,
of course – they're classics of the genre.
Back to books and reading. What were you reading as you entered your teens? For me, books took a bit of a back seat for a while as I got more into music. Was it a similar thing for you? I know we like some of the same bands...
I did get into music a lot more, but I carried on reading. As well as
Agatha Christie and Henry Cecil, I remember reading John Christopher's Sword of the Spirits
trilogy, which I loved. This was in the library, I suppose because it
was set around Winchester, which made it more interesting, of course.
But it also had a fantastic twist, which I'll spoil now so be warned: it
seems like it's set in the past, in some Arthurian England, but partway
through you discover that it is in fact set in a post-apocalyptic
future, where the priests are secretly controlling technology. I guess I
like twists. As well as Dennis Wheatley, I read a lot of Alistair
MacLean, Desmond Bagley, Frederick Forsyth and Jack Higgins. Jeffrey
Archer, of course: copies of Kane and Abel were handed round like samizdat
(and always seemed to open on the same page). There were a lot of
thrillers from the Sixties and Seventies floating around: Hammond
Innes, Geoffrey Jenkins, Duncan Kyle, that sort of thing. In my late
teens, I read a lot of Julian Barnes and Iain Banks, and became more
interested in literary fiction.
I read in an interview that you didn't really discover spy fiction until you were in your twenties, when you chanced upon some spy novels in an Antwerp bookshop on a journalistic assignment. Were they paperbacks? Can you remember what they were?
I did read spy novels when I was younger – my parents had a rather obscure novel, The Left-Handed Sleeper
by Ted Willis, which I enjoyed, and after that I discovered Len Deighton and John le Carré. But I did a degree in English literature and
read very few thrillers at university. So when I walked into that
bookshop in Antwerp I hadn't read any spy novels for a few years, and
wasn't especially interested in them. But there was a whole bookcase
of second-hand thrillers in English, and a lot of them were spy novels. I
picked up The Quiller Memorandum by Adam Hall. The title
was vaguely familiar and I saw it had been made into a film. It cost
next to nothing. I picked out three or four other books – I don't
remember what they were – bought them, and went to do an interview with a
fashion designer. I was impressed by The Quiller
Memorandum, but it didn't blow me away. But I found another
secondhand bookshop in Brussels that had several more books in the
series, and The Tango Briefing had me hooked. I'd never read
anything like it. I'd never imagined a spy novel could be so exciting
but so beautifully written. So then I started reading a lot of spy
fiction.
I can usually recall where I bought the books that are most important to me. Is it the same for you? Where are some of the places you've bought books?
I lived in Brussels for several years, and there's a wonderful
second-hand bookshop there called Pêle-Mêle – anyone who knows me has
heard me rhapsodize about it. It used to have an extraordinary
collection of secondhand thrillers in English, but I suspect it doesn't
anymore as several hundred of them are now in my bookshelves: sorry! I
just cleaned the place out over the course of a few years. I mainly buy
from
second-hand bookshops. I always visit the Charing Cross Road area when
I'm in London, although the pickings are a lot slimmer now. I'll stop at
any flea market, in any country, and check their selection. There are a
few good places in Stockholm, where I live now, but these days I do
most of my book shopping online, which is less interesting but means I
get what I'm looking for. Physical bookshops are for the discoveries.
I've got a silly amount of guidebooks I've bought 'just in case': if I
ever want to write a thriller set in Mauritius in 1976, I'm prepared.
There are a couple of fantastic second-hand bookshops in Rome, which I
mention in the author's note for Song of Treason: I remember being in the back room of one over a decade ago and finding a copy of Encounter
from 1965. It had an article in it by John le Carré in which he wrote
about James Bond being a capitalist hyena and ended by suggesting that
the Russian Bond was on his
way. That was an important find for me, and I still read the article
every now and again to remember the effect it had on me.
I'm reading Adam Hall's The Ninth Directive at the moment, which I believe is your favourite Quiller. Why is that, do you think? And when did you first read it?
The Ninth Directive probably ties with The Tango Briefing for my favourite spy novel full stop. I read both in 2000, I think, one after the other. I love The Ninth Directive
because it's both very pulpy in terms of plot – assassinate the
assassin – but simultaneously seems extremely authentic. While reading
the novel, you really believe that this is how a secret agent would
think and act. It predates The Day of the Jackal by five years,
but has much of that feeling of peeking inside a hidden world. I loved
the way the target is never named, making it almost an elemental
struggle to survive. Beyond that, I don't know... Sometimes you just
connect with a book, or the voice of an author. I've connected with
many, but with Adam Hall it was like a jolt of lightning through me.
One thing that occurs to me as a possible reason for why you like The Ninth Directive is the setting: Thailand. You grew up partly in Asia – do you think that might be why the novel had such an impact on you? I've never been to Thailand but Hall's vivid description of the place strikes me as authentic.
I guess part of my love of The Ninth Directive is due to the
location, although I've never visited Thailand. Then again, I don't
think Hall/Trevor had, either! I was surprised to read an interview with him in which he revealed that he very rarely wrote about locations he
had visited, because he found he lost the magic when he did that. Quite
an astonishing thing to do, really. For the most part I think it's
impossible to tell, and he makes locations come alive. Hall was an
expatriate for much of his life, so even in the Seventies some of his
characters are from an England he had long left behind – as I've
spent most of my life as an expatriate, perhaps I identified with that
feeling in his writing as well.
Which of the books you own are you most fond of? I'm guessing there might be a battered paperback or two you prize, so do please tell me about those. But are there any first editions you;re pleased to own? Am I right in thinking you own perhaps the scarcest Adam Hall book, the final Quiller, Quiller Balalaika?
I own two copies of Quiller Balalaika, but they're less rare
than when I bought them. I have a couple of first edition Quillers which
are dear to me because they were gifts, but although I love books, and
often love the designs of them and the feel of them, I'm not usually
that sentimental about them as physical objects. I cherish books that
have been given to me, and am lucky enough to have a few from other
writers: The Bright Adventure by Geoffrey Rose, Lights in The Sky by Philip Purser, Silver by my friend Steven Savile... I sometimes pinch myself that I own these.
All the books I got in that Antwerp shop were paperbacks, incidentally, as are both my editions of Balalaika
(the same one, with the jacket art featuring Quiller holding, clanger
of clangers, a gun). Most of my books are paperbacks, in fact. Something
I just remembered is that I managed to persuade the editor of the
magazine I worked for in Belgium to let me do a feature article on
Pêle-Mêle, so I toddled off to interview the owner. And after we had
chatted away for a bit he led me through locked doors down to the
basement, where there was a whole room stacked floor to ceiling
with second-hand English paperback thrillers – their overflow room. It
was like Ali Baba's cave. So I didn't just clear out the shop of every
last Household, Hall, Hone and so on, I also raided their secret stash. It was
geektastic.
Where do you usually write? Do you have a study at home in Stockholm?
Yes, I have a small study that is basically a computer, a leather chair,
a sofa-bed and several bookshelves. I have a few small objects about.
Adam Hall's son sent me a Soviet militia badge a couple of years ago,
and I quite often pick that up and
fiddle with it. It's my executive toy!
I'm assuming you write on a computer. Have you always done so? I
actually wrote on a typewriter when I started out as a music journalist
twenty years ago, and when I switched to a computer I found it changed
the way I wrote – instead of writing from beginning to end, I'd write
bits of an article and then sort of stitch it together. I guess what I'm
asking here is, how do you write your novels? Plot them out? Write from
start to finish and make it up as you go along? Or write bits from
across the novel and put them together?
I mainly write on a computer, and always have done, although I also
carry a notebook with me to jot ideas down. I don't have a set method,
but I do tend to write a short synopsis and that gives me a basic
structure. I try to figure out what sort of mood I want the book to
have, what kind of book I want it to be. With The Moscow Option,
I knew going in that I wanted it to be set in the Soviet Union and the
Åland archipelago, that it would take place in winter, and that it would
involve the threat of nuclear war. I wanted the mood to be bleak, but
frantic. I also had some ideas of set scenes, so I started writing them
in basic form first and then worked from there – I wrote part of the
ending first. My structure tends to change as I go along, as I discover
that ideas I liked don't work or think of something better. I find if
I've worked everything out too much in advance it starts to feel stale. I
like to surprise myself, and that involves some tricks to keep myself
on my toes. So it's a mix between planning in advance and improvising.
Do you listen to music whilst writing? What, if so?
Yes, I almost always write to music, as I find silence too imposing. I
put a lot of thought and time into what music I write to, in fact. Some
writers obsess about Moleskine notebooks or where they place their pencil
sharpener, and I guess this is my little obsession. I find it difficult
to write to music with lyrics, so I mainly listen to instrumental
music, or music in which the lyrics are fairly minimal and so are less
likely to distract me from my work. I love Leonard Cohen, for instance,
but I wouldn't try to write while listening to him. I've got several
playlists that are 200-400 songs long so I don't feel like I'm listening
to a loop and I also refresh them quite frequently for that
reason. The basis for most of them is electronica, often taken from
compilation albums with 'Ibiza' or 'Chill' in the title. Particular
favourites are Waiwan, The Flashbulb, Bliss, Snooze, and two collections
called The Jazz House Sessions and Chill House Sensation,
both of which sound absurd but which work very well for me. I find I'm
enjoying the music, but can also stay sharply focussed. I also throw in
some oddities, especially stuff from the Sixties that will help me feel
like I've stumbled into the score of the book I'm writing: a few
Emotions songs, some Persuaders, that sort of thing. Then I have some
jazz – Grant Green and John Scofield – and this all helps make what, in
my fevered mind, is an endless soundtrack. I'm imagining I'm the spy
novel equivalent of David Holmes.
I started this approach with my first novel, but have varied it since, trying out new music
and adding quirks depending on the book. With Free Agent,
I listened to a lot of afrobeat, some of which goes on for a long time
and is quite meditative. In particular, Fela Kuti's early band Koola
Lobitos helped me get into the mood of Nigeria in the late Sixties.
I wore out a haunting Marvin Gaye song, Dark Side of the World, which was recorded at around the time the book is set but not released until fairly recently. Alice Russell's song Hurry On Now
was an important song for me: it sounded like it was from the Sixties
but gave a fresh twist to it, and I was trying to do something similar. I
also listened to a lot of early Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter and Play With Fire
in particular: I wanted the book to feel like those songs. I found it
interesting when I read an early draft of a screenplay for the BBC that
the script began with Sympathy for the Devil
playing over a Lagos traffic scene. It's such a simple idea, but of
course that song is perfect for Paul Dark, and for the series as a whole
in fact.
For Song of Treason, I downloaded several albums of soundtrack
music from Sixties Italian spy films, and mixed them in with my other
music – a lot of Ennio Morricone and his contemporaries. I also listened
to Eve of Destruction by Barry McGuire several hundred times –
that was the key song for the book, an alternative title for it, and
briefly features in it.
For The Moscow Option, I listened to a lot of Sibelius – Finlandia
comes up in the first two books and this one's the pay-off for that,
as Dark is in Finland – as well as a lot of more recent spy scores. I
love John Barry's work but can't write to him as I start imagining Sean
Connery or Michael Caine or George Segal
instead of Paul Dark. Ditto John Powell's work on the Bourne films. I
realized that that sort of sound helped my writing, but I associated it
too much with Jason Bourne. So I spent a few hours on iTunes, using the
preview feature, buying individual songs from spy thriller scores. I
picked a lot of films I haven't seen, so I know I have stuff on my
playlists from The International, Shooter, Spy Game (which
I've seen, but years ago) and several other films from the last couple
of decades. But I don't look at the stereo when they play, and I have
enough of them, on a long enough random-order playlist, that none of
them ever push themselves to the forefront enough to stand out. So
instead of being Track 4 from The International, Track 6 from Shooter and so on, they became part of the soundtrack to The Moscow Option. Just the other day I found a great album to fit in to my playlists for
my current book: Themes for an Imaginary Film by Symmetry. It fits my purposes perfectly, and I've written a lot to it already.
I realize that all makes me sound slightly mad, but when you want to
write a book I think it's worth making yourself comfortable to do it. I
spend some time setting up music so I don't have to think about what to
listen to on a daily basis.
Do you write on the move at all? Do you have a laptop?
I don't have a laptop, though I sometimes use my wife's if we're
travelling, and I also use a notebook. But most of my writing is done in
my study at home.
Do you have to stay away from the likes of Twitter and Facebook when you write, or are you able to dip into them as you write?
It varies. I've gone off Facebook in the last year or so and don't use
it all that much anymore, but I am an avid Tweeter. Sometimes I find
that when I'm writing a lot I also tweet a lot, because I become almost
hyperactive with ideas, and very flighty. But sometimes the opposite
happens, and I just hunker down without any need to go online at all. On
the other hand, I also find I can get overly distracted by the net, and
to get work done I have to switch it off with Freedom – sometimes
willpower isn't enough. It's something I wrestle with quite a bit, as I
imagine many writers do now. Radio silence can recharge your creative
energy, and can be vital. But interacting with people, reading articles
and so on can also reinvigorate and inspire you. It's a balancing
act. The most important thing is getting the work done. You do whatever
it takes.
All three of your Paul Dark novels draw on real historical events, but
in The Moscow Option, not only do Brezhnev and other well-known Soviet officials make cameos, but
Donald Maclean plays a fairly crucial role, too. Why did you choose to bring
Maclean in? Paul's reasoning for seeking out Maclean rather than, say,
Kim Philby, is logical, but from your point of view, it must have been
very tempting to have Philby play a part as well...
You're right – it was tempting, and Philby was my first idea. I wrote
several scenes featuring him, but abandoned them. The scene with
Brezhnev near the start of the novel originally had Dark and Philby
around the table. I also wrote a long scene with Dark in Philby's flat,
and did a lot of research for it. There were several reasons I decided
not to go with that idea. Some of them are to do with that logic – if I
were in Dark's shoes, knowing what I knew of Philby and his career in
Moscow, I wouldn't have risked appealing to him. I also found it very
hard to do because although I feel like I can imagine
Philby quite well, there are a lot of traps there. Philby has appeared
in a lot of spy thrillers, either under his own name or loosely
disguised. So now it's almost too obvious, and it kept ringing false to
me. If I had the stutter it was cliched and almost parodic, but without
it he didn't quite feel like Philby, and so on.
I thought about it for
several weeks, trying different things and doing some research, and
eventually decided that Maclean was not just more likely, but more
intriguing. I thought it was interesting that he had associated with
dissidents in the way he did, and the small incident that forms the
basis of Dark's appeal to him really happened. Most literature about the
Cambridge spies centres on Philby and Burgess, but I found
Maclean equally fascinating, partly because he's harder to read. He was a
handsome man – you can imagine Rupert Everett playing him, I think –
but towards the end of
his life he became rather ghoulish looking. He also had a very screwed
up relationship with his father, as of course Dark does. Philby did,
too, but I thought it would be interesting to encounter someone who had
done what Dark had done, a real historical figure who had lived with the
consequences but who would also condemn Dark for his actions. I
thought this would confuse our feelings about Dark more, in that you'd
both see Maclean's point but also be on Dark's side – after all, we've
come to know him while Maclean is a stranger, and one seen through
Dark's eyes. But if we forgive Dark, why don't we forgive Maclean? Dark
has done more damage. My motives weren't quite as clear-cut as that,
perhaps, but this is the general area I was circling.
As with the two prior Paul Dark novels, the Author's Note at the back of
The Moscow Option is most illuminating as regards the research you do
for your novels and how
you weave real events into them. But I have to say, The Moscow Option
note is rather alarming, in particular what it reveals about President Nixon's "Madman Theory". And the
novel as a whole often sees Paul ruminating on the nuclear nightmare
he's trying to prevent. I vividly recall being terrified of nuclear war
in the 1980s; did you have similar fears growing up?
I'm glad you found that note alarming, because that's why I decided to
use it. I remember the idea of nuclear war scaring me as a teenager, and
of course that fear has faded with the end of the Cold War and the
emergence of new threats, although the risk is perhaps greater today
than it has ever been. Despite that, to most people nuclear war now
seems an abstract idea: in thriller terms, we know the secret agent will
defuse the warhead, but it means very little to us. But it meant
something to me when I was fifteen or sixteen. So I wanted to bring back a
thriller with those stakes, but I also wanted
to remind or perhaps introduce people to what they really meant, and
how fragile the situation was. I was lucky to come across a guy called
Mike Kenner, who is a campaigner for freedom of information, and he very
kindly shared with me thousands of documents he has managed to have
declassified from the National Archives. A lot of these are from the
British government's contingency plans for nuclear war during the
Sixties, and they're chilling. So I used some of that information and
the events of October 1969 to try to craft a thriller that recaptured
some of the feel of the books I read growing up, by Frederick Forsyth
and Desmond Bagley and others, but which I hoped would also hit home now
because of the reality behind it.
Last question: something you find with many writers of fiction is that they don't seem to read
much fiction – when asked what they're reading, it's usually
non-fiction. (This isn't always the
case, of course; Kingsley Amis read a lot of fiction, especially genre fiction.) I guess that's partly down to not wishing to be influenced by
other people's novels when writing your own, but I also suspect it's
that 'busman's holiday' thing: when your 'job' is to write novels,
reading them as well can seem a bit much. What do you think? I know you
read a fair bit of non-fiction, but do you still read much fiction
besides? What are you reading at the moment?
Unfortunately, I fall into this camp – I hardly read any fiction these days. I'm reading Ordinary Thunderstorms
by William Boyd at the moment, but it's one of the very few novels I've
read recently. I'm always looking for new information to use in my
books, and I find that much as I enjoy fiction it mainly contains lots
of ideas I can't use. At the moment I'm writing my first
non-fiction book, about Oleg Penkovsky and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and
as a result I've read around a hundred non-fiction books for research
in the last year – if you think my music selection sounds obsessive it
doesn't even compare. I guess the busman's holiday comparison is right –
for some reason, I often find it very difficult to read fiction now,
and get antsy after a few pages. I happily listen to music and watch
films, but when I'm reading a novel I become very conscious that I'm
taking time away from creating my own
books.
For previous Existential Ennui interviews, click here for a Q&A with Christopher Nicole, alias Andrew York, author of the Jonas Wilde spy novels; here for short Q&A with Jeff Lindsay, author of the Dexter crime novels; and here and here for a two-part interview with Anthony Price, author of the David Audley spy novels.
The name Jeremy Duns has cropped up on Existential Ennui a considerable number of times over the past year-and-a-half, as spy fiction has come to increasingly dominate my reading and therefore the concerns of this blog. The "Abiding Preoccupations" tag-cloud in the right-hand column suggests there are currently seventeen posts (including this one) featuring Mr. Duns, but I suspect there are still more besides which I've yet to label, and, no doubt, many more to come. Jeremy has been invaluable in the writing of some of my spy fiction blog posts – generous with his time and forthcoming with enlightening additional information on, for example, Len Deighton, Sarah Gainham, Graham Greene and Joseph Hone – and both helpful and encouraging on many others.
But of course, we mustn't forget that besides being an espionage aficionado and a regular contributor not only to Existential Ennui but to many other blogs besides (including his own) – not to mention a journalist of long experience – Jeremy is an accomplished spy novelist in his own right – and this week is as good a time as any to remind us of that salient fact, because Simon & Schuster will be publishing the third novel in his Paul Dark trilogy on Thursday. I reviewed the first novel in the series, the excellent Free Agent (2009), in February of last year, and I'll be reviewing the new book, The Moscow Option, later this week – and then following that up with a review of one of Jeremy's favourite novels, before rounding off this run of Duns posts with something very special indeed.
But first I thought I'd take a look at the second Paul Dark thriller:
Song of Treason was first published by Simon & Schuster in paperback last year – at least, under that title. Because as Jeremy explains in this blog post, it originally appeared under the title Free Country in 2010, the idea being that each of the three novels in the trilogy would have "Free" in the title (the third book was to be called Free World). Simon & Schuster, however, "felt there was a danger that Free Country might not signal to those who hadn't read the first book in the series, Free Agent, that it was a spy thriller". Jeremy agreed, and came up with the more apposite Song of Treason. (Incidentally, the novel was published as an ebook for the first time last week.)
Free Agent opened with one of the best twists I've ever read in a thriller, one which I'm now, out of necessity, going to spoil, so if you haven't read Free Agent yet, I'd advise you to get yourself a copy before going any further. Set in 1969, the book began with Paul Dark, British secret agent, being summoned to the country retreat of the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, Sir Colin Templeton, where he learns that a Russian defector in Nigeria has information about a double-agent at the heart of SIS. As we discover at the close of the opening chapter, that traitor is Dark himself, and he promptly murders Templeton in order to cover his tracks, thereafter jetting to Africa to seek out the Soviet defector.
That rug-pulling twist was always going to be hard to beat in the
second book in the series, but Duns does his damndest to top it in Song of Treason, which kicks off shortly after the events of Free Agent,
in May 1969. Dark, having regained the trust of his SIS colleagues (or
so he believes) and now in line to become Deputy Chief, is delivering a
eulogy at Templeton's funeral at St. Paul's when he pauses mid-address, unable to continue. Acting Chief John Farraday approaches the lectern to find out what's wrong, and then falls to the ground, blood "gushing from the centre of his shirt". Farraday has been shot and killed, but Dark quickly surmises that the shot was actually meant for he himself.
From there, the action moves to Rome, as it's believed by Dark's colleagues that Farraday's assassination was the work of an Italian communist group called Arte come Terror. Of course, Dark believes something rather different, namely that his Russian handlers attempted to kill him due to his endeavours in Africa. The truth, however, is even more disturbing, and before long Dark, still suffering from the after-effects of a disease he picked up in Africa, is locked into a battle of wits with a Soviet agent and then abducted and tortured alongside Sarah Severn, the wife of head of Italian station, Charles Servern.
That brutal torture sequence recalls such infamous similar scenes as James Bond's severe grilling at the hands of Le Chiffre in Ian Fleming's Casino Royale or Quiller's attempts to resist a drug-induced interrogation in Adam Hall's The Berlin Memorandum – quite purposefully, Duns being an acknowledged appreciator of both novels – but it's also informed by public school initiation ceremonies – something Duns is personally familiar with, having attended public school as a boy. Indeed, Paul Dark's experiences at school – in particular one brutal episode – in part drive the narrative, alongside his exploits as a mole – especially his recruitment after the war – and the nefarious manipulations of a shadowy right-wing group. As Paul and Sarah embark on a feverish – literally in Dark's case – dash to the Vatican and then Turin, there are double-crosses and violent encounters aplenty, culminating in a jaw-dropping revelation and an unexpected extraction.
Dark remains as fascinating a creation as he was in Free Agent – duplicitous and willing to go to any lengths to save his own skin, but also questioning (his caustic, often irritable narration is peppered with reflective moments of self-examination), utterly determined to stop the impending atrocity he uncovers, and increasingly dedicated to ensuring Sarah's safety. He's no hero, but some of the things he does are certainly heroic, and his loss of faith in his communist ideals lends him an alluring ambiguity – an agent shunned by all sides, yet still driven to do the right thing. But as thrilling as Song of Treason is – and like its predecessor, it really is up there with the best of Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, Adam Hall, Geoffrey Household, Gavin Lyall, Desmond Cory and countless other past spy fiction masters – the final part of the trilogy is even better, as the stakes are raised to unimaginable levels and Dark finds himself attempting to stop nothing less than the devastation of the entire planet...
For this final post (for now) on Desmond Cory's Johnny Fedora spy thrillers (see here, here, here, here and here for previous posts) we're heading right back to the beginning of the Fedora series, to the book that introduced both Cory and Fedora to the world of spy fiction:
Secret Ministry was first published in hardback in the UK by Frederick Muller in 1951, under a dustjacket designed by the great illustrator, graphic artist and children's author Val Biro. Now, all throughout these Desmond Cory posts I've been banging on about how scarce some of the Johnny Fedora novels are. In one sense, Secret Ministry isn't scarce at all – you can download it as an ebook and read it right now. But in another, more tangible sense, it's nigh on impossible to get hold of. At time of writing there's only one copy of any edition of the book under its original title available online – a Shakespeare Head Conpress Printing (whatever the hell that is) on AbeBooks – although there are also a couple of US Award paperback printings of the novel on AbeBooks under its later title of The Nazi Assassins. Of the Frederick Muller first edition, however, there is not a single, solitary trace.
So where did my copy of the Muller first come from? Not from AbeBooks, or Amazon, or eBay, or even an actual, physical, bricks-and-mortar bookshop. No, my copy came from South Africa, via an African eBay-like site called bidorbuy. See, having drawn a blank through the usual channels in my search for a first edition, I resorted to desperately Googling the book's title, and eventually came up with a listing for what looked like it could be the Muller first – the listing included an image of the cover and a date of 1951, but no further publishing info – on bidorbuy (of which I'd never heard before). Unfortunately, the listing had closed. Undeterred, I searched bidorbuy to see if the auction had been won or simply ended, and discovered the latter to be the case. Bidorbuy being an African website I had no idea whether foreign bidders could even participate on it, but I signed up anyway, and contacted the seller to see if they'd consider shipping overseas. Happily they said they would, and after some further communication, between us we managed to arrange shipping to the UK.
And I'm glad we did, for a number of reasons. In the first instance, for a collector such as myself, obviously it's quite exciting to own a copy of such an old, rare and important book – not only the debut Johnny Fedora adventure, but one of two novels Cory had published at the outset of his career in 1951 (the other being the first Lindsay Grey murder mystery, Begin, Murderer!) – and in its original dustwrapper, too (which is a little battered, but still bright). Then there's being able to compare and contrast the story to later Fedora outings to see how Cory and his leading man developed, which is certainly instructive. But for me, the book also boasts an added, more personal significance, one I had no inkling of before I read it.
Secret Ministry, you see, is set in large part in the Sussex South Downs, specifically the area around Brighton and Lewes, the latter being the town in which, for the past four years, I've lived and worked. Lewes is mentioned a couple of times in the book, and Brighton looms large as well, but much of the story centres on the fictional village of Cootsbridge – and when you consider that Desmond Cory was born in Lancing in Sussex, it's not a huge leap to conjecture that he probably based the made-up Cootsbridge on the real village of Cooksbridge, which lies about two miles north of Lewes. (By the way, Secret Ministry isn't the only spy novel set in the South Downs; Anthony Price's The Alamut Ambush is also partly set not far from Lewes.)
Johnny Fedora is sent to Sussex by Peter Holliday of the British Ministry of Information – the eponymous "Secret Ministry" – to investigate drug smuggling by Nazi agents intent in destabilizing Britain any way they can (in the early Fedora novels, Johnny is invariably pitted against Nazis rather than Soviets). At heart of the drug ring is the "Three of Clubs", a gambling den perched atop the Downs overlooking Brighton, where Johnny meets an intriguing mix of managers, barmen, cloakroom attendants, singers and wives, any one of whom could be involved in the nefarious Nazi plot. Before long, Johnny's assigned partner, Murray, winds up dead in a supposed car accident – and Murray is just the first in what will soon become a string of corpses...
I had a brief chat with spy novelist (and friend of Existential Ennui) Jeremy Duns about Secret Ministry on Twitter the other day. Jeremy had just finished the book and noted that it was "light but very enjoyable" and "almost a comic novel, strikingly different tonally from Casino Royale" (Ian Fleming's debut James Bond novel, published two years after Secret Ministry in 1953). And it's true that Secret Ministry is a breezy read – punctuated by bursts of violence, sure, but verging on the madcap in places. But what's especially interesting about it is the way its lightness stands in stark contrast to later novels in the series. Where, say, Undertow (1962, the twelfth Fedora novel) is characterised by longish, some would say ponderous sequences where seemingly little happens – although, it should be noted, those moments of languor do add colour and psychological depth to the proceedings – Secret Ministry consists largely of hectic dashes and quickfire smart alec dialogue.
Moreover, Johnny himself is a very different kind of man than in later books. It's fair to say that Johnny becomes more thoughtful, more introspective as the series progresses (and certainly a lot less gabby: he's quite the chatterbox in Secret Ministry). Here, though, he's a whirlwind of frantic activity, forever darting about, dispensing quips, charming the ladies, charging into action. To some extent a number of those traits are evident in later books, too; Fedora is never the most subtle of operatives, and he retains his roving eye. But in Secret Ministry he displays a young man's nonchalance and lust for life – perhaps reflecting Cory's own youth and joy at embarking on a writing career – with none of the world-weariness which would infect him down the line (not cynicism, though; never cynicism for Johnny).
Many of the differences between younger Johnny and older Johnny can, of course, be attributed to both Fedora and Cory growing up. But it isn't just Cory's chief protagonist who becomes more rounded (and, it must be said, more interesting) as the series continues: Cory's writing style changes as well. Self-evidently, Cory became a much better writer as time went on, more willing to let the narrative drift if he felt a few pages of reflection might be necessary, more assured in his handling of character, in digging beneath the surface of his cast. By contrast, there's not much in the way of "down time" in Secret Ministry, and a lot of character – surface character, anyway – is conveyed through dialogue and inflection – copious dropped consonants, colloquialisms, idioms, abbreviations, all rolled out in an attempt at mimicking the way different people actually speak. Which is all very well when it's a straightforward chocks-away airforce pilot (Murray), but slightly more intrusive when it's a young man of Spanish-Irish extraction who's spent some time in America (Fedora). Thankfully it's a habit Cory quickly rids himself of, and by the time of Undertow he can confidently convey nationalities and accents without recourse to verbal tics and idiosyncrasies.
All that said, the relative unsophistication of Secret Ministry shouldn't detract from it being a thoroughly likable spy thriller: exciting, agile, action-packed, and wearing its influences lightly but proudly; at one point Johnny directly references "Cheyney and Chandler and Chase" (and also, curiously, Jane Austen). On top of that, we learn Johnny's real name (Sean O'Neill Fedora), and there are hints of the darkness to come, notably in the novel's opening scenes, where Johnny and two fellow agents separately dispatch three Nazis. The remainder of the story may be quite jolly, but right from the off Cory makes no bones about the fact that an encounter with Johnny Fedora will, likely as not, lead to an unpleasant death.
I'll have more from Desmond Cory and Johnny Fedora in the future, but next on Existential Ennui, rather than a series of spy novels, I'll be reviewing a series of spy short stories, featuring a pair of older operatives who both live, not in the Sussex South Downs, but in the Kentish North Downs... in the village of Lamperdown, to be precise...
