A return to Sarah Hawkwood's Historical Mysteries

It is nearly three weeks since I last posted a Blog - the longest gap yet. There are two reasons. First, I have started on the mammoth task of putting my Library on a database. Cleverly, it not only records the author and title, but also the condition (dust wrapper or not?), edition, number of pages, publisher and, very usefully, a 'tag' system whereby books can be grouped under headings: e.g. the West Indies, The Anarchy, Scottish authors. I have reached 1075 inputs - the database can hold 5,000. I will not be putting my Oxford World's Classics series or most of my paperbacks on, so will not get near my actual total of just over 8,000. Scanning, then inputting onto the database, takes up considerable time; but I am enjoying the process, as it reunites me with/reminds me of so many tomes I had forgotten or not browsed in for some years.

The second reason is that I decided to read the remaining four Bradecote and Catchpoll Historical Mystery novels one after the other.

  

 

The four books range over the period October 1143 to June 1144. Sensibly, the timescale is a short one (like the Susanna Gregory Matthew Bartholomew and Thomas Chaloner series), so Sarah Hawkswood can go on ad infinitum. Gregory is on her 24th and 15th books respectively. Hawkswood calls herself a 'wordsmith' and she certainly has the skills to carry a tale forward, coherently and with pace when needed. She is developing the three main characters - Bradecote, Catchpoll and Walkelin - realistically and brings in a host of supporting players effectively enough (e.g. the lord Sheriff, William de Beauchamp). She also pays attention to the passing of the seasons and the resulting problems the weather throws up (the hard winter and frozen River Severn in Hostage to Fortune, for instance). The actual mysteries are well-knit, even if the 'culprit' is often known or guessed early on. The baddies are suitably 'bad' and get their comeuppance. Hawkswood inserts the occasional nod to the Anarchy's greater mortals, such as King Stephen, Matilda and Robert of Gloucester. Her next book in the series - River of Sins - is due out in November and I am looking forward to reading it.

I find such Historical Mystery series good for relaxing and untaxing on the brain.  Susanna Gregory has already been mentioned and I have loyally bought each Matthew Bartholomew and Thomas Chaloner episode, even if they have inevitably become mildly repetitive. I also enjoyed Shona (S.G.) MacLean's four novels (2008-2013) of Alexander Seaton's exploits, mainly set in Aberdeen in the 1620s and 1630s. She appears to have called this series to a halt, to turn to the Captain Damian Seeker series (5 novels 2015-2020), which I have not as yet read. I much enjoyed Ariana Franklin's (aka Diana Norman) series (2007-2010) featuring Adelia Aguilar (England's first anatomist!) set in King Henry II's reign. Alas, the series of only four books ended all too quickly due to the author's death.  Another writer I collected was Candace Robb, whose Owen Archer series (1993-2008), was set mainly in York from 1363 to 1373. Robb seemed to have ended the tales in 2008 but restarted them in 2016 with The Bone Jar. The most recent, A Choir of Crows, set in 1374, was published only last month. I haven't, so far, read any of these later three books. I mentioned in my earlier Blog that I had collected and read Edward Marston's sixteen-volume Nicholas Bracewell series (1988-2006), set in Elizabethan theatre days. All the above are a pleasant way to while away the hours, whether on a recliner in the garden, on a train or plane journey, or on the beach.

Of course, a much 'meatier' series is that of C. J. Sansom's (2003-2018) with the lawyer Matthew Shardlake battling his way through the dangerous times of Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I's reigns. His first book, Dissolution (set in 1537) was a mere 456 pages; his most recent, Tombland (set in 1549), challenges the reader's concentration with 866 pages; admittedly, it includes an Historical Essay, Endnotes and a Bibliography. I still found the story enthralling!

Helen MacInnes' last novel: 'Ride a Pale Horse'

Well, I've reached and read the last of Helen MacInnes's novels; it did not disappoint. Ride a Pale Horse (1984) leaves Robert Renwick, who had figured in the previous three stories, behind and, instead focuses once more on an 'amateur'. As always, the  hero (this time heroine) is an American having to battle with the typical MacInnes 'baddies' - communists from Russia and anarchists. Karen Cornell, is a US journalist sent to Europe for  the Prague Convocation for Peace. The city, still under Russian supervision, is one of MacInnes's favourite settings, used in several of her previous novels. Whilst there, Cornell agrees to help a high-level Czech bureaucrat escape to the West. But is he all that he seems - well, no! She is told to contact a CIA expert, Peter Bristow, once she returns to Washington.

 

                                   First edition - 1984              Fontana paperback - 1986

From then on, the scene switches to another of MacInnes's favourite cities - Rome. The story involves anarchists, bombing, treachery and, of course, murders (assassinations?) The author clearly knew a considerable amount about the workings of the USA Intelligence services, both at home and abroad. Her late husband had certainly worked for British Intelligence during the Second World War and may well have been employed in low-level spying for a considerable time after. However, it is not just her technical know-how (compared with today, the spy's arsenal was still pretty primitive) that makes her stories so compelling. The plots in nearly all the novels are complex and tight; she is strong on character, whether female or male; and her descriptions of European cities and countryside is as good as any travel writer's. As one reviewer has said, members of ordinary professions...become accidentally involved in an espionage plot and find themselves navigating an ominous new geography of duplicity and danger with the hint of death around every shadowy corner...the books followed a formula, but it was one that MacInnes shrewdly made work for her.

The last time I read a Helen MacInnes novel was in 1986, 34 years' ago. From Message from Malaga onwards, I bought the Fontana paperbacks as they came out. Much later on, I collected the original UK hardbacks and have ended up with all of them except The Unconquerable. I haven't read my paperback version again, preferring to see if I can chase down the Harrap hardback. The other three books which I have decided not to re-read are the ones set entirely in the USA, a country I am not really interested in (except for spy stories!) 

What were my favourites this time around? When one has read so many in such a short time, it leaves you mildly confused as to which was which. However, the ones that stuck in my mind, in date not preference order:

 Assignment in Brittany (1942); Friends and Lovers (1948); North from Rome (1958); Decision at Delphi (1961); Prelude to Terror (1978); The Hidden Target (1980); and Cloak of Darkness (1982). But, really, I enjoyed them all. MacInnes was known as The Queen of Spy Writers. The vibrant sense of place, the suspense, the Iron Curtain paranoia all support the hammering home of her message - a hatred of totalitarianism of any sort. Dated? Yes and no. The events are obviously anchored in the 1940s-1980s, but the message is as relevant today as it was then. Putin's Russia, Xi Jinping's China, Kim Jong-Un's North Korea and Ali Khamenei's Iran are just as evil as their Nazi and Cold War predecessors and MacInnes would surely have gripping stories to write about them.

Emily Sarah Holt

 Between 1868 and 1893, Emily Sarah Holt (1836-1893) published just over 40 historical novels, as well as a few biographies, tracts and a work of social history. Nearly all of her work was published by John F. Shaw and Co., of London, which kept some of her novels in print through the late 1920s. There is a good article on Holt by  Miriam Elizabeth Burstein, in Clio's Daughters: British Women Making History, 1790-1899 edited by Lynette Felber (University of Delaware Press, 2007), where she comments: Holt's project is both vast and ambitious. She constructs an explicitly Protestant and reactionary history of Britain through fiction in order to oppose the dangers of both Roman Catholicism and Anglo-Catholicism...Holt represents an exceptionally energetic case of the antitolerationist position. Burstein examines Holt's fascination with John Wycliffe and the Lollards, which she explored in both fiction and biography; for Holt, I suggest, Lollard conversion and martyrdom model an ideal mode of Christian being-in-history. I have all of Holt's historical novels - bar five - many in first edition.

       

          Her first was Mistress Margery (1868)     Her last was The Gold that Glitters (1896)

I append the full list below, which shows her fascination with the mid-14th to the late 16th centuries. This is explained by her focus on Lollardy and the Tudor Reformation (which included the horrors of Mary's reign). The books in Red in Bold Font I have in first edition. Those in Red in Italic Font I have New Edition copies. Those in Black font I have no copies of.

The Monument to the Holt Family at St. Saviour's Church, New Line, Bacup

'The Hidden Target' (1980) and Cloak of Darkness (1982) - two more Helen MacInnes

We are now about 40 years on from Helen' MacInnes's first novel - Above Suspicion (1941) - and have reached the 1980's (although the story is set, as usual a couple of years earlier).

 

                                    First edition - 1980                    Fontana paperback

I feel MacInnes is really back on form with The Hidden Target. It is a longer and 'deeper' book than  some of her previous ones. The characters, 'good' and 'bad' were drawn out and, in the case of the former, more likeable. Perhaps, it was pleasing to get away from the decent amateur American hero and concentrate on actual agents - again, on both sides. There is as much detail, and explanation (not condoning their belief or actions, however) given to the anarchist/communist individuals as to the NATO figures. From an urban guerrilla cell in  Essen, West Germany to a finale in Washington, the book takes in London, Belgium, a camper van's trip across Europe to Turkey, Iraq, Iran and India and further activity in New York and California.

Three top Western agents are killed - one by an umbrella tipped with ricin (MacInnes certainly kept up to date: Georgi Markov had been assassinated on a London street via a micro-engineered pellet containing ricin, fired into his leg from an umbrella wielded by someone associated with the Bulgarian Secret Service. It is likely the Russian KGB helped. The attack took place on 7 September 1978. He died in hospital four days later.) There are also attempts on other NATO/CIA lives.

MacInnes makes reference to her previous book, Prelude to Terror, as a bit of a side player in that story, Robert Renwick, reappears in one of the main roles this time. The Vienna escapade is recalled, as well as the girl agent killed at the very end. Crefeld's (Dutch counter espionage chief) eyebrows knitted. "Why the hell do we have to employ women, Bob?" he burst out. "Because they are often better than a lot of men." Renwick thought of his own loss, back in Austria. Almost two  years now. Avril Hoffman ... no, he couldn't forget her... He cut off his memories. Avril was dead. "Also," he went on, "they volunteer. They want a mission that will mean something. Just try keeping women out of intelligence work, Jake, and you'll be picketed from here to Greenland." Ironically, it is three women enemy agents who are used quite effectively: the first, Crefeld's own trusted secretary, Luisa, ensures his death-by-umbrella; secondly, Greta, enrolled at University College, London as Dr. Ilsa Schlott from Stockholm on a course on tropical diseases, is responsible for ensuring Nina O'Connell and Madge Westerman, two American students studying in London, are enticed on to the camper van trip. This is led by two Communist-trained agents, and joint founders of the People's Revolutionary Force for Direct Action,  Marco and Kurt Leitner (really Ramon Olivar, born in Venezuala) masquerading as Tony Sawfield, an Englishman, and James Kiley, an American. Their plan is to set up/encourage revolutionary cells all along their route to the Far East. The third woman, Therese Colbert, is having an affair with Renwick in Brussels. A skilful communist agent, she very nearly achieves the main aim of the enemy plot - to bomb the American President. Thanks to Renwick and O'Connell, in their different ways, it is nullified and Colbert is arrested.

When the camper stops in Amsterdam there is a chance meeting up between Nina and Robert Renwick. Six years ago, as a 15 year-old, Nina had met the then 33 year-old in Geneva when Renwick had been at a disarmament conference as a NATO expert. The eighteen-year gap in age was less important than Nina's youth - as we find out during the book!  MacInnes uses all her narrative skills to drive the quite intricate plot forward. Another link with Prelude to Terror, is that money sent to Geneva by the Communist scheme then, now ends up financing the Sawfield/Kiley trip.

The ending doesn't appear forced. By this time both Marco and Kurt have been arrested, as have Greta and Therese; their main handler, Theo (Herr Otto Remp aka Herman Kroll, KGB agent) and his sidekicks have been killed or committed suicide; and Renwick and Nina set to get married - they had better, having had sex since their time in Bombay! An idea, drawn up by Renwick and others of like minds, to create Interintell - like Interpol - for international sharing of intelligence against enemies such as communists and anarchists, begins to bear fruit. Watch this space, and the next book!

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I looked up reviews on her books on the Amazon website and was not surprised to find comments such as 'dated', 'period piece', 'from the WWII generation'... However, one reviewer was more thoughtful - and correct! - when they added but the ethical dilemma isn't outdated. Too true. MacInnes charts the threats from totalitarian states and anarchists, from the Nazis in the 1940s to the Communists (usually Russia) during the Cold War. Well, we still have an authoritarian system in Russia, even if the USSR has been dismantled; and it has been joined by the far more dangerous and powerful totalitarian Chinese People Republic, led by a ruthless dictator with more power than Stalin ever had at his finger tips. Whilst not forgetting the dangers from the maverick North Korea, the evil theocracy of Iran, the near anarchy of the Isis threat, the monomania of Putin; the awful likelihood of a Third World War breaking out emanates from China above all. Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, India, Vietnam and other south-east Asia countries are very aware of the enemy in their midst. Let us hope we have not left the neutering of this vermin too late.

I hadn't intended to read another MacInnes novel straightaway, but I saw that Robert Renwick was again a major player in the next one - Cloak of Darkness. So, off I went!

 

                                    First edition - 1982                   Fontana paperback

Cloak of Darkness deals with the secret, shady world of international arms dealers. Robert Renwick now takes centre stage. He is now married to the delicious, much younger Nina; his brainchild, Interintell (International Intelligence against Terrorism) has been set up with its HQ in London; and Erik is on the loose again - all subjects dealt with in The Hidden Target. Keppler, based in Switzerland reappears (from Pray for a Brave Heart) an there are the usual twists and turns. The sense of place and MacInnes's strong moral code are firmly entrenched, too. The story switches from London to Washington (and Colin Grant, now running the late Victor Basset's 20 acre museum, also in Prelude to Terror) and then to Chamonix. Renwick is one of those on a Death List and there is also a List of important Westerners who have been compromised. There is a tense outcome in the High Alps, an uncovering of a once-trusted friend and a happy reunion for Renwick and Nina: 'Magic, you are pure magic, darling.' He picked up her suitcase and slipped an arm around her waist as they began walking toward the street.

A brace of Helen MacInnes again

These two spy novels take Helen MacInnes well into the 1970s, doing as she usually did, making the plot and action describe events only a year before the publication. Agent In Place (1976) and Prelude to Terror (1978) keep to the format that served her so well over the previous two decades. The danger of reading all her twenty odd books over only a few months is that the reader can get a little weary with repetition. The plots are similar in that there is usually an amateur American, aged between 30 and 40, who has seen service in Korea and now works as a news correspondent or as an Art connoisseur, who travels to Europe (Italy, Greece, Spain, Switzerland, Germany or Austria) and gets mixed up with enemy agents, usually communists. He links up with, willingly or unwillingly, with the CIA and, often, the British to foil whatever dastardly plot is going on. There is usually a young woman, 25 to 35, who is also another amateur or a Western agent whom he falls for. For a reader in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s - what was there not to like?! The Cold War was at its height, with enemy agents two-a-penny in Western Europe, with some deep undercover in the USA and in the Western spy agencies themselves.

 

                                      First edition - 1976                 Fontana paperback

Agent in Place is, essentially, a warning by MacInnes about two of the most dangerous types in the espionage game: the idealist in a position of trust and the 'deep sleeper' agent who is activated after many years. These are Charles 'Chuck' Kelso, working at the Institute for Analysis and Evaluation of Strategic Studies,  and Rick Nealey (Alexis), communications director to Congressman Pickering of the House of Representatives, respectively. A NATO Memorandum is temporarily stolen by Chuck to release partially to the Press but Rick manages to photograph the entire document, which includes Western agents' names etc. MacInnes' voice is heard early on: Americans were smart - a considerably enemy and one that posed a constant danger - that was what had been dinned into him (Alexis) in his long months of training; but after nine years in Washington, he had his doubts. What made clever Americans so damned stupid once they got into places of power?

The story unfolds in New York and Washington and then moves to the Mediterranean resort of Menton, where both the Russian and the NATO intelligence forces gather. Chuck's brother, Tom, gets involved with his beautiful wife Dorothea; as does Tony Lawton (late thirties? early forties? His voice was attractive...he retained that warm smile and gentle humour in his talk..) a much travelled Wine Merchant - or is that just a 'cover'?! Sure enough 'the' MacInnes girl surfaces: Nicole, French...a fragile-looking girl, small-boned, who could carry the latest fad in fashion...Yes, thought Tony...she was very good in every way... However, she plays a very minor role in the story and it's only in the final chapter that she returns, determined to resign as an agent. She then leaves with a "See you some time" on a telephone call. It feels almost as an afterthought that MacInnes slips in a final 22 lines so that Tony and Nicole can drive off into the sunset. All the 'baddies' were killed, one particularly effective self-blowing up with a boat, or rounded up. I had the odd feeling that the book, good though it read, was a little bit of a rushed job. It was mildly claustrophobic (like Message from Malaga). The bitterness about some Americans, seen in previous novels, was there too:

The all-too typical American of the day: who worried about what happened to other men in other places? Especially when they were espionage freaks, spooks worried in a maze of threat and danger - their own choice, wasn't it? Probably their own creation, too. They did it for kicks or the money, everyone knew that. (Read your friendly local newspapers.) Saving the West? Me included? That's a big laugh. All part of their own hothouse fantasies. Who's threatening me - little men in black pyjamas? Look, get rid of the ego-trippers, the paranoiacs. Then we can all make nice profits and get promotion and enjoy our skiing and our suntanning...

Between this book and the next, MacInnes's husband, Professor Gilbert Highet, died. Could that account for the above and parts of the following book?

 

                                      First edition - 1978                 Fontana paperback  

MacInnes was back on form with Prelude to Terror and in her beloved Vienna/Austria again. The novel was dedicated To Gilbert, my dear companion, who has gone ahead on the final journey. Colin Grant (the amateur American not quite 40) has to go to Vienna to bid for a valuable landscape by the 17th c. Dutch master, Ruysdael for Victor Basset, a very wealthy American collector. It is being sold for a Hungarian who hope to use the money once he escapes to the West. However, all is not what it seems. Grant also want to get over his wife's senseless and brutal murder by a teenager in a Washington Street only ten months' earlier. This trip to Vienna, a much-needed diversion for Grant, leads to murder with his own life in danger throughout the rest of the book.

Occasionally he remembers his wife: Not even grief stayed the same. In these last few days, so much had filled his mind, so much had kept him moving, that no time had been left for bitter memories, or - let's face it, he told himself - for self-pity. Was that really what intense preoccupation with private sorrow could degenerate into? Grief for the past that overwhelmed the present, cut off the future?...there were some who began to mourn more for their own loss than for those who had been snatched away from them. Surely, that came from MacInnes's own heart. 

Moreover Grant meets up with Avril Hoffman, an English girl and one of the NATO agents assigned to his 'case': This girl's eyes were dark brown, not blue; her features were less perfect, pretty but not startlingly beautiful... And Avril plays a major role in the story, even getting kidnapped (but then rescued) by the communists. Grant, for his own safety, after successfully bidding for and extracting the painting from communist plans, finally ends up in a remote house in a remote Alpine village - with Avril. One difference in her novels of even a few years previously, is that MacInnes now brings (tasteful) sex into her story line: Avril and Grant sleep together at the chalet. The following morning Grant moved over to the bed, stood watching her. It was a sleep so perfect that he couldn't bring himself to disturb it. He touched her rumpled dark head, felt a strange mixture of emotion suddenly grip him, sheer exaltation of joy and happiness, or relief and thankfulness. Gently, his lips touched the smooth curve of cheek, the firmness of her neck, the rounded shoulder... Avril is then moved to the safety of a nearby farm, while Grant waits for the Russian agent. The denouement, when it comes, was not what I expected. Avril races back with a warning, shoots at the enemy and is in turn shot - dead. I didn't quite 'buy into' that; in particular, Grant although, of course, upset (he had also been wounded) then decides that his future plan should be to volunteer to become a USA agent. Just as, for centuries, the ideal career was to become a Minister in the Church (particularly the Scottish Presbyterian version) now it appears, to MacInnes at least, that the highest calling should be a CIA Agent! Grant bows out with the final paragraph: He rose and went indoors to pack. Tomorrow was an early start. And just keep going, he told himself. That's all you can do. That's all any of us can do.