'Decision at Delphi' and 'The Venetian Affair' by Helen MacInnes

With these two books, written at the beginning of the 1960s, Helen MacInnes is really back on form. North to Rome was better than Pray for a Brave Heart, but Decision at Delphi (1960/1) and The Venetian Affair (1963/4) mark another step up. The length of the novels allow her to give the characters more individuality and substance, whilst painting in even more realistic backgrounds - much, much more than just a travelogue. What hasn't changed is her anger at, and despising of, totalitarianism; in the Delphi novel it is Nihilism, in Venice we are back to the evils of Communism.

First edition - 1961 in Britain

Kenneth Strang, Macinnes's typical 'amateur but with a background', is sent on a magazine assignment to Sicily then Greece. The sudden disappearance of the photographer, Steve Kladas, and the appearance of an old acquaintance, Alexander Christophorou, from when Ken was in Athens in 1944, starts a series of baffling events. These come together slowly under the umbrella of a dangerous conspiracy, which allows MacInnes full rein to express her hatred for the various totalitarian "isms". Not before, however, he is sent another photographer C. L. Hillard, aka the young, serenely beautiful, quietly elegant... 27-year-old Cecilia Loveday Hilliard...with wide-set dark-blue eyes. When they meet up in Athens, Strang notices her warm smile, gentle and generous, making the pretty lips prettier. There were such other details as flawless skin, alive and glowing, smooth over finely proportioned bones, crowned by a shining cap of dark silken hair. No wonder he falls in love with her. Increasingly drawn to each other, they are involved in dangerous action which moves from Athens to Sparta to a climax among the ruins of Delphi.

Fontana paperback edition 1967

4th impression 1970

MacInnes is very good at recalling the conditions which allowed Greece to fall into civil war after finally ridding itself of the Nazis - how communist guerrillas had the early march on the Allies and how they destroyed other partisan groups on their way to hoped-for total control. Even  now they are returning secretly after spending the last ten years or so in special training schools and camps in Bulgaria and Albania.The story is well mapped out and sustained by descriptions of 'real' characters trying to cope with real events, such as Petros, one of the Greek partisans; Caroline Ottway, a young American airhead; Colonel Zafiris, much clever than he appeared; the elderly Englishman 'Tommy' Thompson, who had hidden during the Nazi occupation of Greece and was a fund of stories; Myrrha Kladas, Steve's sister, who lives in near poverty near Sparta, still young but prematurely aged, her skin, tanned into wrinkled leather by sun and wind, the lines at the sad mouth, the gaunt cheeks, the coarsened hair, the veined hands...; and the little Katherini Roilos, one of those marked to die.

This time the 'evil' is Nihilism, with the communists as much dupes as the capitalists. When Strang  says he's damned glad there are not many nihilists around, the 'baddie's' response is: There do not need to be many. They have no armies, but what is they think they can use other people's armies?...by several well-timed assassinations.  Strang (i.e. MacInnes) counters with: A nihilist believes in nothing. A man who believes in nothing cannot build anything. Therefore, a nihilist can reduce everything to chaos, but he can only keep living in chaos.

First edition - 1964 in Britain

Once again, the plot is based round current history and politics - Algeria and the Generals' Revolt (so well teased out in Frederick Forsyth's later novel). This time the hero American is Bill Fenner, the theatre critic of the New York Chronicle. Sent to Paris to interview people about the French theatre he gets caught up in yet another dastardly plot. Again the central plot is an assassination - in Decision at Delphi it was to be Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia; here, it is to be General de Gaulle. Again, both young American women, who fall for the hero-amateur are kidnapped and both are rescued after thrilling finales. The novel is peopled with the usual MacInnes-type supporting characters: Mike Ballard, the Paris-based Chronicle editor, who fears Fenner is in line to replace him; Professor Pierre Vaugiraud and Henri Roussin (now a cafe owner)  once members of the Free French resistance in the War, but who were betrayed; Neil Carlson, the American security officer attached to NATO and a possible rival for the affections of the heroine; Frank Rosenfeld the CIA agent;   and Sandra Fane, once Fenner's wife but always a Russian agent. Then there are the collection of baddies, this time nearly all Russian communists but with a sprinkling of Frenchmen, including the one who betrayed Vaugiraud and Roussin, then known only as Comrade Jacques, now established as Fernand Lenoir.

Fontana paperback edition - 1966

5th impression 1969

The plot gives MacInnes her chance to roll out her deeply held view: The Communists think far ahead. The dream of a United States of Europe is a nightmare of the Communist world. They have preached that Western capitalism is doomed, ready for burial; a system breeding wars and economic cannibalism A collection of prosperous and peaceful nations in Western Europe would be the complete rebuttal of all Communist theories.  And later: Communists are cleverer than Nazis. Hitler's patience was too easily exhausted. He wanted everything all at once: a thousand-year Reich in ten years. But Communists think of politics as the art of the impossible: just take everything in thin slices, little by little.  Later still: Fenner says to Claire, "Communists are people - a pretty mean type of people at that, unless one admires liars and traitors, or the kind of man who keeps silent when his neighbours or family are carted off to torture or execution. As has happened. By the millions."

The Communist Evil One here is Kalganov, aka Robert Wahl, masquerading as a film producer, who always happens to be there or thereabouts when bombs go off or disturbances occur. In 1946, he boasted he had killed 2,029 people! These included anarchists and socialists in Catalonia, Free French and, later, Ukrainians and Poles. Here, he is supported by the sinister Jan Arvan, who keeps dying his hair different colours.

The complementary love story, as always, is neatly fitted around the political/thriller content. Claire Connor is blonde, close up, her skin was as flawless as he had thought, with a touch of colour in her cheeks to give it life. The eyes were large, darkly lashed, warm. Chin and nose and cheek and brow were all moulded by some master hand. Fair hair had been piled high to crown her finely shaped head. Her lips - yes, pretty lips that knew how to smile. Oh dear, I have fallen again. The scenes in Venice were particularly realistic - on the Lido, in St Mark's Square and wandering round the little dark passages and squares. It made me want to return, after so many years.

Addendum

I have just watched the film (1966) based on The Venetian Affair; well, it retained the main characters' names - Fenner, Sandra Fane, Rosenberg - and it was set in Venice. Apart from that, it turned out to be quite a different, and less exciting, story. The acting, by Robert Vaughn (in an audition for his Man from U.N.C.L.E role), Elke Sommer and Karl Boehm, was mediocre; Boris Karloff did a reasonable turn as an old professor-type; but the only winner was Venice itself. One can hardly make a film about that city and not come up trumps. I can only wonder what Helen MacInnes must have thought of the travesty.