Robert Wilson’s spy novel The Company of Strangers was published in 2001. It spans the period 1940 to 1991, though over two-thirds of the book is set in the 1940s.

In 1940 Andrea Aspinall has survived German bombing in London which reinforces her hate of Germans. Her mother seems cold towards her so there is no love between them either. We then leap two years to the German invasion of Russia. Captain Karl Voss is disillusioned by the incompetence of Hitler who is unwilling to admit his forces face defeat against the cannon fodder of Russia. ‘It’s as if God’s lost control of the game and the children have taken over – naughty children’ (p328). Before he can be slaughtered, he is sent home to Berlin on compassionate leave in 1943. While there he is approached by a high-ranking officer; he is to be transferred to the German Legation in Lisbon. He is to become a spy – with the intention of shortening the war by clandestinely meeting with sympathetic British agents... 

In 1944 Andrea is recruited and trained as an agent for ‘the Company’ to work in Lisbon under the name of Anne Ashworth. Despite Portugal being neutral and one of England’s oldest allies, the country was not regarded as a safe haven. Under Salazar’s quasi-fascist regime, ‘Secret police – Gestapo trained – called the PVDE. The city’s infested with bufos – informers’ (p82). ‘... what she knew about the Portuguese – they understood tragedy, it was their territory’ (p413).

Voss is entangled in the secret machinations of Operation Valkyrie – the assassination attempt on Hitler – as well as his growing relationship with Andrea. There are shifting allegiances, it seems, and nobody can be trusted. That includes the bickering Americans, Hal and Mary Couples, Andrea’s host Wilshere and his demented wife Mafalda, the SIS agents Meredith, Sutherland, Rose and Wallis and the suspected turncoat Lazard. There is also the mystery of her predecessor, the American Judy Laverne who was either deported or died in a terrible motor accident. And behind the scenes Russian spymasters are lurking.

The febrile atmosphere in Lisbon is projected realistically and the action scenes, where blood is spilt, are dramatic and exciting. From time to time the suspense is high, too. And while the plot is convoluted it remains compulsive, and despite the narrative moving across many years the reader’s interest is held for the 560+ pages.

The book title crops up at least twice. Once when strangely she suddenly harbours a fear while flying, when God might ‘let them drop from the sky and she would die in the company of strangers, unknown and unloved’ (p417) and referred to again on p542.

When writing of the tragedy of Portugal, he could have been referring to the tragedy of the main characters. Sadly, I found the ending unsatisfactory – though in all probability truthful. This is only my opinion, after all. Indeed, Wilson is a good writer and has a gift for the telling phrase and metaphor, such as these samples:

‘She gave him a smile torn from a magazine’ (126). [Like this, better than giving him an insincere smile...].

‘blistered with rust’(p203) – a good description.!

‘He stirred his tea for a long time for a man who didn’t take sugar’ (p431). [conveys disguised mental turmoil, perhaps].

‘She listened again to the settling house and painted the desktop with her torch beam’ (p202). [better than his torch lit up the desktop].

‘Cardew shifted in his seat and looked as wary as a grouse on the Glorious Twelfth’ (p95).

‘Cardew stared intently at the windscreen as if the entrails of squashed insects might lead him somewhere’ (p97).

‘... fighting his way into unconsciousness, desperate  to stop living with whatever he had in his mind’ (p118).

‘The wind was stronger out here, blowing sand across the road, which corrugated to washboard, hammering at the suspension’ (p121). [good visuals!].

The blurb refers to this book as a thriller. While there are thrilling interludes, I feel it is too sedate to be a thriller. It’s a good novel, though.

Editorial comment – for the benefit of writers:

‘the incessant chatter in the room suddenly grated on Anne’s ears like a steel butcher’s saw ripping through bone’ (p160). [Probably should be a butcher’s steel saw, since he wouldn’t be a robot?]

‘I tried to join the WRENS...’ (p181). This should be either lower case Wrens or uppercase WRNS.

So many scriptwriters do this all the time: ‘... she saw Lazard and I together in the casino...’ (p269) – Should be ‘Lazard and me’. And ‘...Rocha had seen Voss and I together in Bairro Alto’ (p330).

I feel that metaphors are sometimes best jettisoned:

‘... a voice as clipped as a shod hoof on cobbles’ (p149).

‘He searched himself for words, like a man who’s put a ticket in too safe a place’ (p163).

‘He waited for a lifetime, which in normal currency was only twenty minutes’ (p320).

Paul Phillips’s spy thriller The Borodino Sacrifice (published 2024) is the first book in the Chasing Mercury trilogy. 

I can see why Phillips dedicated it in memory of Peter O’Donnell, author of the Modesty Blaise thrillers: the novel is fast-paced and introduces us to two characters who end up facing dangers together – in a similar manner to Modesty and Willie Garvin.

I’m a sucker for word-play in titles, chapter headings etc. There are four parts. 1 – Between the Lines; 2 – Behind the Curtain; 3 – Beneath the Ashes; 4 – Upon the Mountains. So we have four different yet relevant prepositions.

We start with US sergeant Sam Bradley protecting a Brit spy, Jones, in the Moravian forest when a violent altercation occurs between a partisans. Inevitably there’s plenty of action at this time of Cessation of Hostilities at the close of World War II in Europe. Czechoslovakia is a mess, with national militias, partisans, communists and anti-communist guerrillas on the rampage... Bradley’s observant and memory-scarred. ‘... the Red Army mechanics had the  jeep repaired by midday. Bradley wished flesh and blood was as responsive’ (p155).

Jones wants Bradley to find one of his people who is missing: Ludmila Suková, codename ‘Mercury’. Usually called Mila. She is almost a force of nature. ‘... there was something else about her, something real and strangely potent’ (p241). Mila is a layered character, an enigma, somebody who never gives up, no matter what obstacles get in her way. Like many spies, she used a poem to encrypt her messages, reminiscent of Violette Szabo’s written for her by Leo Marks in 1941; Mila’s is by W.B. Yeats. Gradually, we learn of her backstory and it seems the past has come to define her. Mila is on a quest of her own.

Bradley’s quest takes him to Berlin where he witnesses the devastation as well as the amazing rubble-women clearing away the detritus of war. Where there are razed buildings there are bodies: ‘Summer heat – the dead were making themselves known’ (p76).

Phillips's power of description puts you in the scene: ‘Smoke caressed the cobwebbed roof-space. The derelict mill was poorly shuttered and dusty beams of late afternoon sun were slinking across the walls. (He) heard an insect trapped somewhere, and the ticking of a watch’ (p55). And: ‘The sinking sun had turned the windows of the terraced tenements to molten ingots’ (p216).

His action scenes are intense; you can almost hear the shell casings hit the ground. However, it is not all action. Sometimes there’s poignancy. One individual reflects: ‘His heart had been buoyed by the last blessing, the tenderness of a woman, even directed at a worm such as he – a traitor, a nothing, a black joke, a geography teacher in a land without place names or frontiers, on a continent with its populations upended, in a world where the maps were redundant’ (p58).

The story has depth and is well researched, brilliantly evoking this period of post-war confusion. The assassination attempt on Heydrich in 1942 is pertinent. Men from GRU, NKVD and Smersh are plotting and loyalties are tested in grey areas. Behind the scenes the future of Czechoslovakia is and its people is being determined...

At the end of the book the reader is quite breathless. Happily, as you will be aware from the first sentence, there are two more in the continuing saga of Bradley and Mila. (I suppose that constitutes being labelled as a ‘spoiler’ – both survive the tense travails of this book!)

Note:

Berlin's rubble-women are detailed in Volume 4 of my Collected Stories - 18 history tales, Codename Gaby.

Lionel Davidson’s Kolymsky Heights was published in 1994 and garnered great praise as a thriller of over 450 pages. It was his last novel. It’s a spy story with a difference.

A mysterious message is sent out from a secret Russian research station situated in Siberia. Whoever works there cannot leave, ever. A French Canadian Indian, Jean-Baptiste Porteur – renamed Johnny Porter – has had contact with the source of the message. He is recruited by MI6 and CIA to investigate and sneak into the secret complex to find out what is happening there.

Despite its page-count, I found it a fast read.

Davidson provides layer upon layer of detail to make the Indian’s quest believable, and it works very well. Along the way we get to know Porter who manages on his wits to get what he wants. He is good at making friends and enlisting unthinking help. He is good at disguising himself as a man of several nationalities, and employs his vast linguistic knowledge.

Whether it’s the journey from Japan by sea or penetrating the permafrost wasteland of Siberia, you feel the place, feel the cold, smell the engine oil. There are several maps which prove useful.

There is an element of science fiction in the guise of the McGuffin Porter seeks.

It is also a love story.

The final pages are tense, fast-paced and immersive.

I thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

Davidson died in 2009, aged 87.

This adventure again features Kenneth Aubrey, Deputy Director of British Intelligence, and Patrick Hyde, one of his field agents.

The book begins with a map of the North Sea, UK, Scandinavia and Russia and the Barents Sea. This is followed by documents from Plessey, the weapons manufacturer, the SIS, Ministry of Defence and the US Navy Defence Department, all relating to the installation of a new anti-sonar system for submarines, ‘Leopard’.

The nuclear submarine HMS Proteus has the system installed and is running trials at sea when a distress call is detected.

At about this time a search was underway for Leopard’s inventor, Quinn, who has gone missing. Hyde is attempting to track down Quinn. Soviet agents are attempting to abduct Quinn’s daughter, Tricia, in the hope that she will lead them to Quinn’s whereabouts.

The distress call is a trap and the captain of Proteus, Commander Lloyd falls for it.

The tension mounts as a number of Soviet surface ships and submarines play cat-and-mouse with the Proteus – for their sonar is incapable of detecting the British submarine, thanks to ‘Leopard’.

Ingenious methods are deployed by Russian Valery Ardenyev, office in charge of the Soviet Underwater Special Ops Unit to incapacitate the submarine and take the crew captive and then learn everything about the Leopard system.

A rescue mission is then mounted by Aubrey, using USN special agent Ethan Clark.

The suspense mounts, switching from Hyde’s search in England, Ardenyev’s bold assault in inclement weather, Aubrey’s altercations with Ministers and the Navy’s hierarchy, Commander Lloyd’s concern for the safety of his vessel and crew, and Clark’s near-impossible mission on the edge of the Arctic Circle.

 A gripping thriller that time has not spoiled in the slightest. 

This, the first book in the trilogy No Time to Spy by Max Allan Collins & Matthew V Clemens (published by Rough Edges Press, 2021) is highly enjoyable. The authors are after my own heart with their playing with words – both book titles and chapter headings. Some chapter headings: Harbour Frights, Dominican Dominoes, The Brother-in-Lawford, and Sand Storm, for example)

The action of all three books spans from 1959 to late 1963. The central conceit is splendid: John Sand is a recently retired MI6 agent, now married to Stacey. His real-life exploits have been written as fiction by a friend and former colleague not a million miles removed from Ian Fleming. ‘Though retirement had been forced upon him by his colleague’s novels – and because Sand’s body carried more lead in it than a crate of number two pencils – he relished his new freedom.’ (p13)

Unfortunately, the past tends to raise its ugly head in the guise of an old enemy, Raven, who attempts to kill not only Sand but his wife! It is possible the attempt is connected to a secret mission the US President wants Sand to undertake – go and protect Castro from a planned assassination!

Apart from the local colour, the authors also inject the Rat Pack into the story – capturing the voice and mannerisms of Sinatra et al (yes, including Peter Lawford). The period is well-realised, as are the references: ‘Wearing a smile on a face on loan from Troy Donahue, the blond boy said…’ (p105)

There are several amusing scenes, plenty of wit and suspense, a dash or two of sex, glamorous settings, and the kind of fast-paced action we’ve come to expect in the life of a famous spy. ‘Sand let go of the assassin, a corpse now, and let him sink like the stone he’d had for a heart.’ (No spoiler page number here).

I look forward to savouring the other two books: Live Fast, Spy Hard and To Live and Spy in Berlin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editorial comments:

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

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

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

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

Blame the editor.

 Ted Allbeury’s 1989 espionage thriller Deep Purple has all the hallmarks of his earlier books: authentic background, knowledge of the inner workings of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

It all begins with Yakunin, a KGB walk-in at the British embassy in Washington. He is swiftly flown to a safe house in England where he will be questioned by Eddie Hoggart, a man who worked his way up from a deprived childhood to become a seasoned interrogator.  Hoggart is married to Jacqui, a sex worker with a past that includes a Soho hard-man, Harry Gardner. In effect, Eddie and Jacqui are two sides of the same coin, surviving the hard knocks of society. Eddie was helped up by an adoptive parent and he wants to help Jacqui. Only Gardner has other ideas…

Confusing the mix is yet another defection: KGB man Belinsky, who appears to contradict the revelations of Yakunin.  Which one is the genuine defector, and which is the plant? Or are they both not what they seem?

The big question is: do they know about a mole in the higher echelons of MI6?

Here we can understand the lonely existence of spies. Yes, orphans definitely make the best recruits.

There are some poignant and tragic moments in this story, which rings true, thanks to Allbeury’s attention to the details that matter.