Yet more Helen MacInnes - 'Pray for a Brave Heart' and 'North From Rome'

I have just polished off two more Helen MacInnes 'thrillers' in a row - a marked change from my last two reads - Arnold Bennett and Jan Needle. I bypassed her previous three (after Friends and Lovers) - Rest and be Thankful, Neither Five nor Three and I and my True Love, as they were set in contemporary America and that background didn't appeal to me. These two, Pray for a Brave Heart (1955) and North from Rome (1958) return to Europe and both are enmeshed in the Cold War. MacInnes's world is invariably black and white: Communists have taken over from the Nazis as the baddies, while the good old U.S. of A is the white knight; or, rather, 'amateur, good-at-heart' Americans, of both sexes help to thwart the evil machinations of the Russians.
                    First edition 1955
Pray for the Brave Heart is set is Switzerland in Bern (although it starts in Berlin, where Bill Denning, an American, is returning to the USA).

             

Fontana paperback - 5th imp. 1969

An old colleague from the Army days, Max Meyer, persuades him to divert to Bern instead - he needs help with uncovering a huge illegal jewel transaction, the Herz Collection. The sting in the tail is that the money raised by the sale will be used to further the communist cause. I must admit, this wouldn't be one of my top MacInnes novels; I didn't particularly warm to any of the characters, several being only briefly sketched in. The tense atmosphere is well drawn, as are (what one critic called) the 'travelogue' bits. MacInnes, like many other thriller writers (Scott Mariani these days, Colin Forbes back-a-day) tends to use her holiday venues a bit too obviously sometimes. To another criticism - that MacInnes is 'dated', I would respond, of course she is. It is a contemporary thriller, about the growing menace of drug dealing, the historic menace of gem stealing, the actual menace of Communism, very much in the forefront of people's minds in the 1950s. Most authors are 'dated' - that is why I retreat to them, finding the present day (not just this menace of coronavirus) as pretty awful.

Communism and communists are 'uniformly evil' to MacInnes, seeing men and women not as human beings but as instruments. Luckily for Denning and his friends, Where there was courage, there was a chance. "There's a point of no retreat for all of us", he said at last. "When you reached that, you turned, and fought back." Which is what they did, and they triumphed over the jewel thief, the stupid 'neutrals' (Richard van Meeren Broach in this novel and Bertrand Whitelaw in North from Rome: both have to die!), and the communist gang members.

First edition - 1958

I enjoyed North From Rome more; perhaps it is because it is one of my favourite cities and I could follow the movements of the characters around the thoroughfares. One of the greatest charms of Rome is the fact that it is still a living city - not just a collection of office buildings, business headquarters, and stores which all close down at night, leaving bleak lights in their windows for cleaners and watchmen....there, the people not only work but live.

The characters (such as Joe/Giuseppe Rocco, the undercover Italian policeman; Tony Brewster, the drunk English reporter; the American Professor Ferris - surely a sketch of MacInnes's own husband!; and the 'sleeper' communist, Salvatore Sabatini) were more alive and interesting, more deeply sketched than the previous book's. The love story intertwined with the thriller and, inevitable, anti-communist plot, worked quite well. The 'villain', Luigi Pirotta, was more finely drawn and believable; there were different shades of evil to the 'baddies'. Rather like Rebecca and Rowena in Scott's Ivanhoe, I was drawn to the dark-haired Rosana Di Feo rather than to  Eleanor, the American off/on girlfriend of the 'hero' Lammiter. But with MacInnes, the Americans, particularly the amateur, has to win! Although there is a tinge of anti-Fascist material (Mussolini is recalled as rather a joke than anything else), it is Russia that gets both barrels: "Everyone knows that there are still some hidden drug rings. And with Communists running them, I hear. It's one of the under-surface battles that Russia has been waging since the end of the war." When Whitelaw, the 'neutral', expostulates "you can't be afraid of you Communists in Italy...they're such delightful people", the old, ageing beauty Principessa (who once smacked Mussolini when he tried it on with her), replies,"I did not mean our nice Communists, who want to help the workers. I meant the real Communists - who shoot the workers. As in Poznan last month." 

Fontana paperback -  6th imp. 1970

The evil 'Mr. Evans' is another Burgess or Maclean - a traitor working for the Russians. The scene moves to Montescecco then Perugia, both convincingly described, for the denouement and communists' comeuppance. Jacopone, the old gamekeeper at the Principessa's villa in the former town, is convincingly drawn, especially when Lammiter says farewell with "Viva Garibaldi!" A wide grin broke across the wrinkled face. "Evviva!" Jacapone said heartily. "Viva Garibaldi!"

As a minor aside: I hadn't realised how often MacInnes uses the innocent, usually young, bystander as a way to solve problems or advance the plot: the English schoolgirl Emily in Pray for a Brave Heart; Sally Maguire, the American student from Burbank, California in North from Rome. Well, it will be two more MacInnes - Decision at Delphi (1961) and The Venetian Affair (1964), after I have read another Sir Walter Scott - Rob Roy (1818).


PS There has been a time 'gap' in Blogging, as I have been rearranging all my Victorian/Edwardian books, having added three extra shelves (all my own work!). Now all my Sir Walter Scott novels and books about him are together, as are all my Robert Louis Stevenson works. On a lower level (in all senses) my Emily Sarah Holt and Evelyn Everett-Green now have shelves to themselves; while G. A. Henry and Charlotte Yonge share a shelf. The changes have left a space for the only 'growing' section - my Scottish novels - from both ends of the 19th century: Galt, Ferrier, Brunton to the left and the Kailyard School to the right. My updated digital catalogue now details each book: date of publication, author, title, edition, quality and cost. Surprisingly, there are very few where I have not recorded the purchase price. Many, many bargains, but also one or two excessive spendings.

                                              Three of the four Bays                  Scott etc.

Downstairs (apart from my mammoth John Buchan and his family Collection) are mainly 20th century authors - Daphne du Maurier, Maurice Walsh, Gordon Daviot/Josephine Tey, Constance Holme, Mary Webb, Stanley Weyman, R. H. Forster, Helen MacInnes; as well as literary biographies. Much to do!