Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.
I found this article in the NY Times Historical Database, and thought it might be a good introduction to discussing The IPCRESS File (remember, our discussion starts on Monday!). This is a brief overview of the state of spy fiction a few years after publication of Len Deighton’s first novel, with astute commentary by mystery writer / editor / Borges translator / reviewer extraordinaire Anthony Boucher. There are inevitably a number of thoughts and questions this article raises, that I’d be happy to discuss in the comments, although I plan on touching upon them in my discussion of IPCRESS.
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Originally published: June 7, 1964
There’s A Spy Between the Covers
By Anthony Boucher
Close observers of the bestseller list on page 8 have noticed an unprecedented phenomenon in recent months: the persistence in the top sales brackets of three novels of espionage–John Le Carre’s “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,” Helen MacInnes’s “The Ventian Affair,” and (until quite recently) Ian Flemings “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”
Actual sales figures on these books are even more impressive. The Fleming has sold over 70,000–well above any previous Fleming. The MacInnes has sold over 80,000 (and is still selling over 1,000 a week)–again well above any of the author’s earlier books. And “The Spy” has sold around 163,000, or probably about 25 times the sales of both previous Le Carré novels. The initial print order on the paperback edition will be in the neighborhood of 750,000. His first spy novel, “Call for the Dead,” is now in paperback in an edition of over half a million. The softcover edition of “O.H.M.S.S.” will be one million, bringing the total of Ian Fleming in print in this country to over 12 million.
Spy novels, even those of the acknowledged master, Eric Ambler, have never sold like this before, nor is this strictly an American phenomenon. A recent London Daily Mail bestseller list of 10, fiction and non-fiction, includes four novels, all of them dealing with espionage. (The just-mentioned Le Carré and MacInnes titles, plus the new Fleming, “You Only Live Twice”–to appear here in August–and Gavin Lyall’s “The Most Dangerous Game.”)
A spy writer, the late Jean Bruce, is the most successful popular novelist in France since Simenon; and espionage novels make up an even larger part of publishing in France than they do here, where they seem to constitute almost half of my reviewing duties in the suspense field. Two of the annual French literary prizes are awarded solely for romans d’espionnage (One of them is attractively named, in honor of the most entertaining spy of World War II, Le Prix Cicéron). And there is even a Russian spy novelist Lev Ovalov (but he got a bad review in Pravda–his American secret agent was properly sinister but much too capable).
Spy stories we have always had with us. Like everything else, they can be traced back to the Bible. (See for instance, Joshua ii for the fine story of Rahab the harlot and the spies of Israel.) There are spy narratives in the Sherlock Holmes canon (including the classic “His Last Bow”); and even before World War I there flourished such specialists in spy fiction as E. Phillips Oppenheim and the earlier and even less remembered William Le Queux.
This was all (save, of course, the Biblical accounts) in the unrealistic school of glamour-espionage to which Fleming still adheres. Still colorfully theatrical, but with some closer adherence to the laws of both life and literature, were the magnificent pursuit stories of John Buchan (”The Thirty-Nine Steps,” 1915). The first reasonably realistic stories of espionage may be in “Ashenden” or “The British Agent” (1928) by Somerset Maugham, who had himself served the Foreign Office during the war.
It was in the late 1930’s with the people of England and America becoming more and more aware of international politics ander their implications, that the spy novel came of age. First there was Eric Ambler with “Background to Danger” (1937), then Graham Greene with “The Confidential Agent” (1939); and it became apparent that a spy novel could be as well written and meaningful as an other form of fiction.
With the approaching rumbles of World War II, a number of admirable writers turned for the first time to chronicling international intrigue. Margery Allingham, Nicholas Blake, Helen McCloy, Ngaio Marsh and many others, most notably Michael Innes, saved the free world from fascism in skillfully written entertainments; and Peter Cheyney, in this “Dark series, starting with “Dark Duet” (1943), brought the bitter techniques of Hammett to this most suitable of topics. Even Kay Boyle joined the throng.
Afterwards (one is tempted to say, “between wars”) these writers returned to their usual more private violences; and it is only in the past few years that the publication of spy stories has equaled and even surpassed (in quantity, and once in a while in quality) its wartime level.
Now there are a number of writers devoting apparently full time to such fiction. Most noteworthy, aside from those already mentioned, are England’s William Haggard, who possesses, in addition to a dry wit, a fine eye and ear for the subtle intricacies of top-level political intrigue, and America’s Donald Hamilton, who demonstrates, in a series of paperback novels about a professional killer in counter-espionage, an authentic toughness of mind unmatched in this field since Cheyney (and possibly in any field since Hammett). On the more flamboyant and colorful side are England’s Desmond Cory and John Blackburn and America’s Edward S. Aarons and Stephen Marlowe.
The most austere chronicler of the slogging day-by-day dullness of much spy-activity is Simon Harvester; Len Deighton, on the strength of one book (”The IPCRESS File,” 1963) seems to be developing an odd and unclassifiably amused viewpoint of his own. Gavin Lyall (mentioned above as an English best seller) is unrivaled for vigor of storytelling and clear complication of plotting. Michael Gilbert, who has written in almost every type of suspense, is now creating a memorable series of espionage short stories in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
The spy story is, by and large in good shape today. So is what Julian Symons calls “the modern crime novel”–which attempts, and so often successfully, to combine the mainstream novel’s probing of character with the whodunit’s ability to puzzle and surprise. Yet there is no comparable build-up for Mr. Symons or Margaret Millar or Charity Blackstock, who are as good in their way as Le Carré. Why these phenomenal sales for only one aspect of the widely variegated “novel of suspense”? Why is everybody suddenly reading spy novels?
There are certain obvious contributory factors; such as President Kennedy’s endorsement of the work of the then only moderately successful Ian Fleming, or the superb promotional job that an enthusiastic publisher performed for “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.” But let me venture a more basic guess.
Espionage is a reality closer to the average man than at any previous time in history. The C.I.A. has had far more detailed news coverage than did ever the O.S.S. We are more aware of the spy behind the arras when we read of international affairs, and the reality of espionage presses upon us even more closely than that. Our businesses have their own methods of spying upon each other, and upon us. We know, thanks to George Orwell in prophecy and Vance Packard in recent reportage, that few moments of our lives are inaccessible to someone’s spy. We have, in short, come to accept espionage as part of the certain human condition, and thereby to accept is as a normal part of any kind of fiction.
According to Boucher’s Third Law, the microcosm repeates the macrocosm. Within the spy novel, you will find everything that you find in the novel itself, from extravagant romance to sober realism, form trash to serious literature. And all these aspects are no longer ghettoized as The Suspense Novel: Subdivision X, Espionage. Today, they are subsumed into general fiction, and sell just as they would if they were about–
Wasn’t it Jane Austen who said, “I write about love and money; what else is there?” In this world of 1984 minus 20, make it love, money and espionage.
