We have a new co-editor for Monday Murder Mystery!
Michelewln will be joining me in producing this weekly series. She has contributed diaries in the past and has a stack of ideas ready to go for the future as we alternate hosting duties. But contributions from you, dear reader (love being able to say that) are, as always, welcome.
Meanwhile, I will be working hard to get the Political Book Club up and running. Politics, people, process, I find them endlessly fascinating and look forward to sharing that fascination. This morning's diary is on Kim Ghatta's book, The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power. If you haven't read it yet, please check it out.
Before there was Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum, Fredrick Forsythe, Ken Follett or Jack Higgins, there was Helen MacInnes. Frequently left off of many "best of" lists, and sometimes forgotten, her work was some of the earliest of the WWII and Cold War spy/thriller genre.
Since Titan Books is re-issuing some of her work this year, it only seems fitting to recognize her in this, the Women's History Mystery Month.
Have you ever heard a song on the radio that transports you back to your first dance with that guy whose name you no longer remember but was sure you would love for the rest of your life because his thick, curly blonde hair just called to the depths of your soul when you were a high school sophomore? And you smile as you recall how very young you were and how important everything seemed to be.
I sometimes get that feeling when I pick up a book that I first read as a young teen. I remember that earlier me, finishing the book and re-reading the cover blurb and savoring the experience of the novel. Thinking about the romantic, and sometimes dangerous world within and how brave were the protagonists to fight honorably for freedom. (Yes, FREEDOM!!!) And how lucky to be able to do it in such wonderful, exotic places with names like Delphi, Malaga, Salzburg.
Somewhere along the way I became too cool to care about the fight against the tyranny of the Soviet Union. Too hip to consider it brave to fight American battles surreptitiously. Funny thing about life, though, if you survive it, it often gives you a chance to come full circle.
And so I picked up a Helen MacInnes novel and realized that perhaps I wasn't as grown up and cool as I thought I was because I still found her tales engaging and her people endearing.
Born in 1907 in Glasgow, Helen Clark MacInnes graduated from Glasgow University in 1928 and four years later married Gilbert Highet who was a classics scholar there. They moved to the States in 1937 when he accepted a year long teaching position at Columbia University in New York. Offered a permanent professorship at Columbia, they settled in Manhattan, and both became American citizens in 1952. She wrote 21 novels (sold 23 million copies in the US and was translated into 22 languages) before passing away in 1985 at the age of 77.
Her protagonists are ordinary people who stumble into the strange world of espionage, and then attempt to do the right thing to support the good guys and rain defeat and despair upon our enemies. Very black and white with few shades of gray involved. Good guys and bad guys. Her stories are like comfort food for anyone who tries to understand the complex and interrelated issues that are present in today's world where the good guys and the bad guys are harder to discern.
Above Suspicion
1941
Richard Myles is an Oxford professor who, with his wife, is recruited to do a favor for a friend during their upcoming summer holiday in Europe. This friend, Peter Galt who is with the government, asks for Richard's help in determining the status of one of their agents who has become silent. But they can only get to the agent by being led one step at a time to his destination by other contact along the way. Galt feels that the presence of Richard's wife, Francis, will place them above suspicion and make them appear to be no more than a vacationing couple on a carefree holiday. Francis insists that she is going, in spite of Richard's refusal to consider her involvement.
As they travel across Europe, being handed off from one agent to another, they encounter another Englishman and a newspaper reporter from America. The suspense and sense of impending trouble builds with each new locale as they get deeper into German territory.
On their honeymoon in Bavaria, the Highets were disturbed by the activities of the Nazis, and Miss MacInnes kept a diary filled with examples of Nazi violence and the Adolf Hitler menace. A few years later she fashioned her notes into the novel ``Above Suspicion,`` the story of a young British couple who sought a British anti-Nazi agent in Germany in the summer of 1939 while seemingly on a vacation. An immediate best-seller, the book and was made into a 1943 motion picture starring Joan Crawford and Fred MacMurray.
-Chicago Tribune
Of course, it is highly unlikely that the British intelligence service would enlist the help of untrained civilians for a mission of the type the Myles embark upon, but once past that, it is easier to maintain, or even forget the suspension of one's disbelief. Only to learn later that Gilbert Highet did do occasional work for Britain's MI6.
Assignment in Brittany
1942
In this one the disbelief has to be suspended almost immediately as we are introduced to Martin Hearne who is parachuting into Brittany to assume the identity of Bertrand Corlay a prosperous farmer in a small village. Bearing an uncanny resemblence to the Frenchman, Hearne's assignment is to gather information about the German plans to repel a possible British invasion while fooling those who knew Corlay. But it turns out that Corlay wasn't just an innocent French farmer further complicating Hearne's already delicate mission.
While the opening scene of this novel, as Hearne sails his chute down into France, feels authentic, I don't know that it justifies this unsourced claim of a Wikipedia article, although I have seen the same elsewhere.
MacInnes's third novel, Assignment in Brittany (1942), was required reading for Allied intelligence agents who were being sent to work with the French resistance against the Nazis.
- Wikipedia
North From Rome
1958
A phone call prompts Bill Lammiter, a young American playwright, to follow a former girlfriend to Rome. There Lammiter saves a mysterious Italian girl from a beating and the fat is in the fire. A kidnapping, a battle in a Renaissance villa, a shrewd gamekeeper, a chance snapshot and a touring preppy contribute to the excitement and suspense of this Cold War thriller.
- Titan Books
When Ed & I planned to visit Rome in the fall of 2012, I did all of the travel planning, including the decision to stay at the Marriott Grand Hotel Flora even though it was pricier than other options. I used Google Earth to walk the streets and liked the area with its potential view of the Borghese Gardens, and since our luggage was being shipped via a service, I wanted to make sure that we were staying in a major hotel that could receive it in our absence. Or at least that is what I told myself.
Until I read the first few pages of North From Rome and realized that this was the same hotel the protagonist was staying at when he heard a woman scream late at night from the balcony of his room.
It made me wonder about the power of a suggestion planted 40 odd years ago. The locations featured in all of MacInnes' work become key players in the novels. They are like travel guides to cities we may never visit. And her descriptions stick with you over the years, perhaps on a subconscious level. I believe now that I wanted to visit Salzburg, not because of the Sound of Music, but because of Helen MacInnes.
Titan Books is releasing some of her work this year. (First date is kindle release, second is paperback release date.)
Above Suspicion (1941)
Jan 2, 2013; Jan 29, 2013 |
Assignment in Brittany (1942)
Jan 2, 2013; Mar 5, 2013 |
While Still We Live (1944)
Aug 6, 2013; Sept 3, 2013 |
Horizon (1945)
Aug 6, 2013; April 26, 2013 |
Neither Five Nor Three (1951)
Aug 6, 2013; Nov 5, 2013 |
Pray for a Brave Heart (1955)
Jan 8, 2013; Jan 29, 2013 |
North from Rome (1958)
Jan 8, 2013; April 9, 2013 |
Decision at Delphi (1960)
Jan 8, 2013; May 21, 2013 |
The Venetian Affair (1963)
Mar 5, 2013; June 18, 2013 |
The Double Image (1966)
Aug 6, 2013; Oct 1, 2013 |
The Salzburg Connection (1968)
Jan 8, 2013 ;July 16, 2013 |
Message from Málaga (1971)
Aug 6, 2013; Aug 6, 2013 |
The Snare of the Hunter (1974)
Aug 6, 2013; May 24, 2013 |
Agent in Place (1976)
Aug 6, 2013; June 28, 2013 |
Readers & Book Lovers Series Schedule