First edition - 1972 Fontana paperback - 1973
Thirty-seven year-old Ian Ferrier, on leave from the US Space Agency, is sitting with his old buddy, Jeff Reid, in the back courtyard of El Fenicio, an inn in Malaga, waiting for a display of flamenco dancing to begin. Tavita, Jeff's friend and dynamic performer (and owner of the complex), is to be the star of the evening. Then trouble begins - Tomas Fuentes, a 'defector' from Cuba who has been brought through an underground route, is introduced by Tavita to Jeff. The latter is actually in the CIA and is tasked to help Fuentes, who turns out to be a ruthless Soviet agent, trying to bargain with the USA. In typical MacInnes style, Jeff is subject to a vicious assault (he later dies in hospital, after another attack). Not before, however, he has passed on incriminating information about Fuentes, verbally and through a mini tape hidden in his cigarette lighter. From then on, Ferrier is drawn into an increasing dangerous whirlpool of espionage. The action moves from Malaga to Granada and the Alhambra, where a lethal battle of wits is finally fought out.
The Dedication is For my friend Julian a man who has never given up the ship. One assumes MacInnes means the 'fight for freedom' against Communism. Certainly, the book repeatedly emphasises the dangers: 'Don't take anarchists or communists as your political bedfellows unless you want to wake up castrated'. The twentieth-century experience [Ferrier] thought. 'But the radicals never learn , do they?' Reid is clear in his mind: The things that never get known, that can't be published unless you want to throw people into a panic; the things that stand in the shadows, waiting, threatening; the things that have to be faced by some of us, be neutralised or eliminated, to let others go on concentrating on their own lives. MacInnes turns on the bitterness: The new American life style, squalid and sleazy and soft. Capitalist self-indulgence, imperialist decadence; it's all on the point of collapse - with calculated violence and the threat of terror to help, of course. A push here, a shove there, and it falls apart. America is up for grabs. The tough-minded will win, and it is no longer fashionable for America to be tough. She ramps up the importance of agents: he's your man, out on point duty, your first line of defence...what use are the brains of government if they haven't ears and eyes they can trust in far-off places?
There are several Americans who have turned traitor - Lee Laner, a supposed 'hippie but actually a KGB killer (he is the first to attack Reid but is subsequently bumped off by his own side); Gene Lucas, tall narrow-shouldered, fairly young - who is another communist undercover. Worst of all is Ben Waterman, an American Ferrier had first met in Korea then in Washington in the 1960s. He proves to be the arch-traitor and boss of all the others. Thank goodness for 'Smith' (actually Bob O'Connor, who Reid had wanted contacted) and a young henchman 'Mike'. They are the straight-guy CIA professionals who win in the end! Additionally, there is the slimy Spanish Dr. Medina who aids the communist agents and Captain Rodriguez, the Spanish policeman, who pursues his own course of justice - another typical 'good guy' supporting the Americans
Amanda Ames, the usual pretty girl turns up - brunette...one hundred and twenty pounds, five feet four in flat-heeled sandals, thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six, all pleasantly disposed of in the right proportion. She had a merry smile, too... She is not another amateur this time but an American agent. Ferrier semi-falls for her, but her American boss, Martin, is actually another two-faced, double agent. We don't meet Amanda until page 109 and then she is not seen again until page 260; the reader's antennae twitch - is she, for once, not going to end up with the hero and she really was a stunning girl? In fact, she dies, with her neck broken, murdered by the communists.
The second book - The Snare of the Hunter (1974) - sees MacInnes back to her best; it is not as claustrophobic as Message from Malaga, and, although the evil ones are the communists yet again, the story is redolent of the period, concentrating on an escape across the Iron Curtain (or barbed wire) from Czechoslovakia, then under the control of the Russians and into yet another year of show trials.
First edition - 1974 Fontana paperback - 1976
Irina crosses through the wire from Czechoslovakia into Austria in July 1972, leaving behind her recently divorced husband, Jiri Haradek, a high-ranking officer in the political police. She looks forward to joining her father, Jaromir Kusak, a world-famous author who has found secret sanctuary in the West. One of those helping her is David Mennery, whom she once loved when they were both teenagers, an American music critic who was persuaded to cross the Atlantic to help her get to her father, now in Switzerland. The flight, from Vienna through Austria to Switzerland is well-described with major problems along the way.
It wouldn't be a MacInnes thriller unless there were twists and turns, which include obvious communists, traitors and good American amateurs. Two brothers Josef and Alois are killed in the early stages - one at the actual frontier barbed wire, the other thrown out of a window. Both the victims of Ludvik Meznik, seemingly on their side but actually working for Jiri Haradek. There is also the arch-traitor, Mark Bohn, an American journalist and apparent 'friend' of David Mennery. Although he dislikes any 'rough stuff', especially if it leads to a death, MacInnes make it clear that she has utter contempt for his 'type'. They figure in several of her novels I have already re-read. The story is unusual, in that both the CIA and the British MI6 have backed off from helping and it's a mixture of American and British amateurs who succeed in reuniting father and daughter. There is the inevitable pretty girl, Jo Corelli, who for once does not link up with Mennery, as the old love is rekindled with Irina; Hugh McCulloch and Walter Krieger, who are all friends of the author and who all play vital parts in foiling the baddies.
MacInnes' description of the Austrian and Swiss towns and the car chases ensures the novel is not just another one of her diatribes against the communists. The tension builds steadily and surely to a climax. There is also, for the first time I think, a sexual element: Mennery sleeps with Irina - they are not yet married even though both are divorced: He turned away from the window, came over to the bed where she lay outstretched, face half-buried in the pillow, hair loose and golden, a twist of sheet barely covering her hips. Lightly, trying not to wake her, he kissed her neck, her shoulders; felt the smooth curve of her waist, the gentle roundness of her breasts...her arms went round him, pulling him towards her, her lips meeting his. This is raunchy for MacInnes!
The band of friends all survive, even if Krieger ends up in a hospital bed; and Jiri Haradek (who had planned the whole escapade with the intention of kidnapping Jaromir Kusak and (probably) killing everyone else) returns to Czechoslovakia to a certain show trial and execution. I positively enjoyed the novel, more so than the previous one. A plus was that in the front of my book is stuck a small headed notepaper, signed by MacInnes herself!
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