Book Review: Europe in Autumn (2014) by Dave Hutchinson

Dave Hutchinson needs to network more. I've read any number of mediocre and crap SF novels that are covered in enthusiastic blurbs from other authors, bloggers, and online fanzines. Europe in Autumn has one measly blurb from someone named Eric Brown, who may well be Dave's downstairs neighbour for all I know. This novel deserves a raft of accolades, so for his next novel (which will surely be a sequel to this one) Dave needs to start hitting the fan conventions and standing rounds for his fellow SF writers down at the pub.

One of the chief pleasures of this novel is its unpredictable ambition. The setting is Europe in the near future and the region has spawned dozens and dozens of new states, some as small as a few city blocks. All these polities, as they are called in the book, have thrown up new borders and travel restrictions to go with them. There are always people who want to move themselves or contraband across borders unnoticed, and a shadowy organization called Les Coureurs des Bois has sprung up to serve their needs. Rudi, a young Estonian working as a cook in Krakow, joins the Coureurs and begins a career that becomes more dangerous and mysterious with each mission he takes on. The novel ends with Rudi discovering that there is, quite literally, more to Europe than meets the eye.

Europe in Autumn is shelved in the SF section of the bookstore, but it mostly reads like a great espionage novel, perhaps a forgotten title by Len Deighton. All the tropes and flavour of the spy novels of the 1960s are here: tense encounters with border guards; middle of the night frontier crossings under the glare of searchlights; double and triple crosses; dead drops; passwords and false identities; and sudden, shocking violence. One sequence in particular, set on a snowy night in the state of Potsdam, stands out as a brilliant blend of SF and old school John Le Carre-style tension as Rudi tries to smuggle a man across the border. The first half of the novel is picaresque in structure as we follow Rudi around Europe in his job as a Coureur. His various adventures are entertaining in their own right, but Hutchinson's portrait of a divided and sub-divided Europe is rich and endlessly inventive. He smartly pays attention to the small details of life, which gives his imagined Europe greater verisimilitude than is usual in these kinds of alternate reality stories.

Rudi is an excellent guide to this new Europe. He's witty, cynical, clever, but motivated by a quiet idealism to see Europe once again become borderless. Rudi more or less stumbles into his job with the Coureurs, and in this regard he's very much like one of the heroes of Eric Ambler's spy novels, many of whom are men with ordinary lives and jobs who suddenly find themselves having to cope with terrors and realities that are far outside their experience.

Although Europe in Autumn starts out as an alternate reality spy novel, by the end it's begun a seamless transition to something far stranger and more in keeping with its SF designation. There's clever future tech on display throughout, but it's always kept in the background. What's most remarkable about this novel is that Hutchinson's prose is fully the equal of his imagination. All those SF writers with big, bombastic ideas (and blurbs) rarely have the writing skills to back up their glitzy concepts. Hutchinson's writing is so good it he'd be worth reading no matter what genre he tackled. And if he doesn't use some part of this review as a blurb then he's just being difficult.

Book Review: The Crooked Man (1997) by Philip Davison

In one of his blog posts, spy novelist/critic Jeremy Duns neatly divided espionage novels into two camps: desk work and field work. A desk-work spy novel is all about spymasters trying to sniff out moles, turn enemy agents into defectors, and divine what the other guy is up to and then frustrate his plans. It's a cerebral genre, and John Le Carre would be the poster boy for it. A field-work novel follows agents at the pointy end of the espionage stick: surveillance, assassinations, dead drops, car chases, shootouts, and having sex with implausibly-named women if your name is James Bond.

The Crooked Man is very much a field-work spy novel. The crooked man of the title is Harry Fairfield, a lowly odd-jobs man for a sub-section of MI5. Harry doesn't even rate an official position, he's simply paid on a per job basis by Hamilton, his ruthless MI5 boss. Hamilton is one of those oh-so-English spies with an Eton tie who can use the word "quite" as a weapon and who refers to his hitmen as "chaps." Fairfield is what Len Deighton's Harry Palmer character (he was only given this name in the films made from Deighton's novels) might have become if he'd succumbed to booze, gambling and the moral brutality of his job. Fairfield is a bit a wreck, hating himself and what he does despite being rather good at it. He's used by Hamilton as an occasional minder for senior politicians, a burglar, and sometimes as an enforcer.

This is a slim novel, but Davison packs a lot of plot into it. The action shifts from London to Dublin to Bosnia, and Harry finds himself at the centre of several murders, including one committed by a cabinet minister that needs to be covered up by MI5. The plotting is excellent, but what makes Davison stand out from the herd is the quality of his writing. Here's a snippet from a scene where Harry KOs a man sent by Hamilton to search his flat:

     He groaned and let out a nauseous whine. His eyes focused on me momentarily, then on the picture cord that bound him.
     "What have you done?" he asked painfully.
     "I've waited patiently," I replied
     "You hit me...you..."
     "Oh, I did," I confirmed.
     "What did you hit me with?" he demanded with the same pain evident in his voice.
     "With conviction," I said assuredly. "What's your name?" I asked.
     He wasn't going to tell me.
     "A first name will do."
     He had a tic in one eye that made want to slap his face.
     "Winston. I'll call you Winston."
     No response.
     "Winston," I said, "these days there's a lack of social cohesion that makes it increasingly difficult for us all to decide what we mean to each other...wouldn't you agree?"
     He sneered. I slapped his face hard. He agreed there was a lack of social cohesion.

Davison's dry, acidic prose is wonderful, and there was one particular line that stuck in my mind (but I can't find now) that describes a character as bringing their problems with them like "a kite on a short string." Fairfield isn't only a hardboiled quipster. The backbone of the novel is his moral struggle with his crimes of omission and commission. Fairfield has intense feelings of guilt, and even tries to atone for his sins, which is pretty much unheard of in spy fiction. In this regard Davison is a thematic cousin to Graham Greene, but for my money Davison is the better writer. There are three more Fielding novels after this one, but they seem to be out of print. So here's me off to the used book stores.

Book Review: The Oxford Gambit (1980) by Joseph Hone

After reading and reviewing Joseph Hone's first spy novel, The Private Sector, I resisted the urge to dive into another of his books. He's only written a handful of novels and I didn't want to use up the limited supply in a matter of weeks. I failed. I simply couldn't help myself; his writing is so good, in so many ways, I just had to try another to see if he was more than a one-novel wonder. No worries; The Oxford Gambit is also in the stratosphere of espionage fiction.

This time out, Peter Marlow, the hero (if that's the right word) of The Private Sector is brought out of retirement to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Lindsay Phillips, one of MI6's top-ranking officers. It's not clear if Phillips was abducted or defected, and there are some within MI6 who don't want Phillips found at all. Marlow is a friend of the Phillips family, and for a time was romantically involved with Lindsays' daughter. Marlow's investigation takes him across Europe, and each stop on the journey reveals as much about Lindsay and his family as it does the reason for his disappearance.

As with Sector, Hone uses the spy genre as a framework for a more ambitious goal; in this case, a meditation on the impossibility of knowing everything, or anything deeply meaningful, about an individual's character and beliefs. In Hone's view, no matter whether a relationship is based in politics, faith or love, nothing a person says or does in front of a loved one or an ally or even an enemy is ever fully representative of what that person truly feels or believes. A relationship, like espionage, is a game of bluffs, ruses and, sometimes, cruel betrayals. Hone doesn't forget to incorporate the traditional elements of spy fiction--danger, violence, intrigue--but his emphasis is very clearly on how human relationships can mirror the twists and turns and horrors of the cloak and dagger world.

Another brilliant aspect of the novel is it's look at how the political and moral choices made by people before and during the Second World War have cast long and deadly shadows. The story is set in the mid-1970s, but for the main characters events of forty years ago are still dictating their actions, and, for some, secrets kept too long can be as deadly as bullets. Hone's twin themes of the mystery at the heart of the individual and the terrible and difficult choices made by people during Europe's descent into war, come to a head in the climax of the story in a way that makes this possibly the saddest, most haunting novel about spying that's ever been written. And in the character of Lindsay Phillips Hone creates a brilliant symbol of the duality of the individual, and especially of those caught up in the spy business. Lindsay is, to all outward appearances, the exemplar of all the characteristics and virtues of the English gentleman. His truth is far more complex. And his relationship with his daughter, which might be called platonically incestuous, ends up as a symbol of the dashed dreams of those who believe in an idealized England.

So why is Hone almost forgotten these days? I think part of the reason is that the spy genre has fallen on hard times. Since the removal of the Iron Curtain, novels about the bloody chess match between the intelligence agencies of the East and West have been largely replaced by straight up thrillers about terrorists, which is a change it's hard to argue against based on current events. A more particular reason for Hone's obscurity is that he strays too far into literary fiction. His novels are fully satisfying as espionage stories, but for readers who are familiar with the work of Le Carre, Ambler, Deighton and Julian Rathbone, Hone's elegant, exact prose and fascination with the human heart might seem daunting or distracting. So now that I've exhausted the library's supply of Hones, expect to see me haunting the spy section of your local used book store.

Book Review: The Private Sector (1971) by Joseph Hone

It sometimes seems those parts of the Internet not taken up with porn or cat videos consist of people breathlessly telling the world about the best film/TV show/beach/bagel "you've never heard of." Well now it's my turn, and my nominee in the category of spy fiction writer is Joseph Hone. How unknown is he? Amazon shows only a few of his books for sale, and even the Toronto Public Library (where I work) has only two titles, and we're a library system that's sclerotic with dusty old genre fiction. And how good is Hone? So good I'm calling an audible and kicking him out of the spy fiction field; there's no need to ghettoize him in a genre, he's simply one of he best writers I've come across, genre or otherwise, in a good long while.

The Private Sector is set in Egypt in 1957 and '67. The 1957 section revolves around the recruitment of Peter Marlow, a dual citizen of Ireland and Britain working in Cairo as a teacher, into the British Intelligence Service. The '67 section follows Marlow as he returns to Cairo to investigate whether a fellow agent is defecting. I'm not going to attempt a plot synopsis because to properly describe the twists and turns would require flow charts, venn diagrams, and possibly a PowerPoint presentation. Just take my word for it that the plot is everything you want in espionage fiction; full of double agents, double-crosses, and double whiskies served in hotel bars to shifty-eyed men trying hard not to look like they're there to spy on the shifty-eyed men down at the other end of the bar.

What's most remarkable about this novel is the beauty and intelligence of Hone's prose. His descriptions of Egypt and Cairo, his ruthless and incisive portraits of even the most minor characters, and his masterful handling of his theme of a British Empire in its final decline, it all takes your breath away. Here's a couple of examples, among many, of Hone's sharp writing:

"...or perhaps it was the rather sinister attraction Arab countries can have for people with  an authoritarian view who have somehow not managed  to express that aspect of their personality adequately at home. Egypt had reconciled Cherry to the mild tyranny of his nature."

And...

"Giant pitch-black Nubian waiters in blues and golds, like coloured pictures from a child's Bible, padded aloofly round their table, pouring out whiskies and dumping ice from great silver bowls, strangers to this tribal feast."

Another reason I don't want to stick Hone in the spy fiction ghetto is that the first third of this novel is pure literary fiction. This section of the novel describes Marlow's early days in Egypt and the beginnings of his relationship with Bridget, whom he eventually marries. This part of the book can be read as a brilliant novella about the human flotsam and jetsam left behind by the rapidly receding British Empire. The Egypt Marlow sees in '57 is a curious, pathetic, and droll world of Brit expats gone to seed and middle-class Egyptians anxiously aping the rituals and tastes of their former masters, wittily symbolized by a boy at Marlow's school who always sets his watch to GMT, two hours behind Egypt. It's in this part of the novel that you realize that Hone shouldn't be compared to people like Ambler or Le Carre, but to writers like Patrick Hamilton and Olivia Manning, two authors who took a ferociously forensic approach to their characters and the social environment they moved in. I was particularly reminded of Manning, whose sextet of novels about an English couple in World War Two (The Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy) shares with Hone's book the theme of the British Empire slowly leaving the playing field of history. Both writers do a superb job of describing the melancholy and bitterness of people caught up in this transition.

When it comes to the espionage aspects, Hone is bracingly cynical. None of the spies on view are idealistic or committed, and their masters are seemingly equally free of ideology. Marlow quickly learns that empire building (or breaking) is a kind of game in which the score is kept but there are never any winners. This games aspect of spying is cleverly underlined by several sequences involving badminton, croquet and tennis, and several mentions of different kinds of playing fields. Marlow is essentially tricked into becoming a spy, and Hone shows us that the other spies playing the game do so because it satisfies a psychological itch or indulges a fantasy.

Hone is still alive and writing, and a couple of years ago he wrote an autobiography called Wicked Little Joe that's supposed to be pretty damn good. Finally, credit where credit is due: I was tipped off to Hone by a piece on author Jeremy Duns' blog. The link to his article is here.

Book Review: The Scorpion Signal (1980) by Adam Hall

In the spy thriller genre, Adam Hall never got the respect he deserved, probably because his spy, Quiller, fell between the twin poles of Fleming and Le Carre. A Quiller thriller isn't as over the top as the former, nor as realistic as the latter. Hall is, however, a better writer than either one. Quiller, who never uses a gun, is an expert driver, pilot, martial artist, and has the Bureau's highest rating for being able to withstand torture. The Bureau, a special section of the British Secret Service, is Quiller's employer and is tasked with the hairiest assignments. What distinguishes the character of Quiller is his almost clinical ability to analyze his own physical and psychological reactions to stress, danger, fear, and violence. These passages have an almost Proustian attention to sensory details that might strike some readers as strange, but there's no doubt they set Quiller (and Hall) apart from the common herd.

Hall is also an exceptional writer of action sequences, often using a sudden, jolting stream-of-consciousness technique that generates a real feeling of excitement. The Scorpion Signal concerns a rogue British agent who may be plotting an assassination attempt on the Russian president, and, like almost all the Quillers, the tension doesn't let up until the very last sentence. Reading a Quiller is a text book exercise in how to write a thriller that's both exciting and a credit to the profession of writing. Hall puts sentences together in the same way Enzo Ferrari crafted parts to assemble a GTO. His muscular prose is a wonder of efficiency, flows beautifully, and with a few, deft words he can artfully sketch a character, a place or an emotion. Lee Child (my review of Worth Dying For is here) writes equally compulsive thrillers, but, in keeping with the automotive metaphors, his prose is more of a Detroit muscle car: loud, brash, and not very elegant in the corners. 

As good as Hall was, The Scorpion Signal was effectively his swan song. He wrote ten more Quillers, but they became formulaic, and Hall's right-wing politics began to make distractingly polemical appearances. The most action-packed of the Quillers is The Kobra Manifesto (1976), but possibly the best is The Tango Briefing (1973), in which our hero must deal with a shipment of nerve gas that's gone missing in the Sahara. Hall, whose real name was Elleston Trevor, was an absolute writing machine. He wrote under eleven different pen names and produced dozens and dozens of books in virtually all genres. As Elleston Trevor he wrote The Flight of the Phoenix, which has been filmed twice. I don't think the Quillers are still being printed, but there seems to be a good supply in used book stores. Now if only used book stores were in good supply

Book Review: This Green Land (2004) by John Fullerton

Why the hell haven't I heard about John Fullerton before? The only reason I came across this Beirut-set thriller is that I was in process of discarding a bunch of old paperbacks from the bookmobile and this one stuck out from the usual bulk load of James Pattersons and Danielle Steels. Fullerton is an excellent writer, deftly combining scenes of violence with evocative descriptions of the beauty and terror of Lebanon. It's not an exaggeration to say that with this novel Fullerton puts himself on the same level with Eric Ambler, and, dare I say it, a notch above John Le Carre. So why isn't he more well known? That's easy. You don't get ahead in the thriller business if you slag Israel and the U.S. And you can completely forget about selling the film rights if your heroine is a communist suicide bomber.

The story is set in Beirut in 1985 as the city, and Lebanon, is being hung, drawn and quartered by Israel, Syria, the PLO, the Phalangists, and an alphabet soup of political and ethnic militias. Nicholas Lorimer, a young Brit working for the UN, arrives in Beirut to take up his first posting. He's already been targeted by Ustaz, the leader of a shadowy communist organization working to kill El-Hami, the leader of a Christian militia. El-Hami is poised to become the next leader of Lebanon and once he's in power things are likely to get even worse for the country. Reem is a young Christian woman groomed and trained by Ustaz to assassinate El-Hami in a suicide attack. Part of her mission is to start a relationship with Lorimer. Because Lorimer is with the UN he has easy access to all parts of Lebanon, and Reem can therefore tag along with him and scope out the security around El-Hami.

The inevitable happens and Reem and Lorimer really do fall in love, and what began as a thriller also becomes a very tense romance. The tension comes from the question of whether Reem will let her heart win out over her political convictions. This Green Land succeeds as a thriller because Reem and Nicholas are effective, believable characters who have an unlikely but plausible love affair. As the novel moves to its climax we're desperately hoping that both of them will survive.

What sets this thriller apart from others in the field (and probably doomed its commercial success) is its pointed and effective criticisms of Israel and the U.S. Fullerton doesn't go out of his way to grind a political axe, but he makes it clear that those two allies were behind a lot of the overt and covert carnage in Lebanon. Mainstream thrillers don't dare say things like this. Fullerton was the Reuters bureau chief during Lebanon's civil war and so I think it's safe to say he knows whereof he speaks. In relation to this, it's hard to imagine a better evocation of a city at war. Fullerton peppers his novel with flashes of violence that feel like first-hand accounts. At any moment of the day or night an artillery barrage, a mortar strike, a car bomb or a shootout can kill one or one hundred people.

If there's a weakness here it lies in keeping track of who's doing what to whom. That's probably how it actually felt in Beirut in 1985, but at times I had trouble figuring out who Reem was working for. Lebanon's civil war was a tangled and bloody affair, and Fullerton lets us see the blood but doesn't do much to make the political superstructure to the war more understandable. That, however, is a minor flaw. Judged solely as a thriller this is a top-notch page-turner, as they say, and when I say it bears comparison to Eric Ambler it's because, beyond being well-written, Fullerton borrows Ambler's technique of using a naif as his protagonist. Ambler's male protagonists were almost always innocent Englishmen caught up in foreign intrigues that exposed their political innocence. Ambler used this narrative device brilliantly and Fullerton is his equal with This Green Land. Keep in mind that the hardcover version apparently goes under the title of Give Me Death.