I
have read quite a lot of spy fiction, mostly Eric Ambler and John le Carré but
also Joseph Kanon and Graham Greene. I enjoy a good spy novel and that is how I
came to pick up this one from the Waterstones table despite the implausibly
large number of product endorsements – some of them not about this novel but
about the writer’s work in general.
Apart
from the fast-paced climax I thought it pretty awful. The prose is clunky,
the dialogues ditto (notably the supposed transcripts of the hero’s
psychoanalytic sessions). The narrative is padded out with alcohol being drunk
and cigarettes smoked, everything given proper names intended to nail a 1963 period atmosphere (Gitanes, Kools) but again clunky and feeling more
like product placement. It would have been entirely in keeping if The Cat (one
of the better crafted characters) consumed only branded cat food (it would have
to be Kit e Kat).
Structurally,
most of the initial plot involving MI6 and the Russians is abandoned as the
story is developed and replaced by a different narrative involving MI6, the CIA and a rogue element within the CIA. Sub-plots simply pad out the length; the sex scenes don’t
work. The story finally settled on – a rogue CIA plot to assassinate President
Kennedy in Berlin – is a good one because it is structured to imitate
features of the actual assassination: the would-be Berlin assassin is killed
before he can spill the beans about who paid him just as Lee Harvey Oswald was
promptly shot by Jack Ruby.
If
I had been an editor advising I would have asked for a more focussed plot line
and some restraint in endlessly naming drinks consumed and cigarettes smoked. The jacket design barely connects to the story except insofar as an antique car hints at the period and images of a woman and a man promise a Romantic Interest. I guess that was the sum total of the brief.
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