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Earlier, until he left in disgust at their labour espionage work and became a communist, he worked for the Pinkerton detective agency. Hammett was the pioneer of the "hardboiled" detective novel. One enters instead the amoral realm of a master of the short sentence not to mention short words like "moll".
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One has escaped in a single bound the Wee Free manse that spawned John Buchan. The Informer occupies a position of iconic significance in Irish literature.ħ. An unintelligent man, he is pitilessly hunted down by the intellectual Commandant Dan Gallagher. Gypo Nolan, O'Flaherty's protagonist, informs on a left-wing friend in the Irish civil war for the paltry sum of £20. The book reminds us that espionage is not limited to international intrigue. O'Flaherty declares in this novel: "Informer! A horror to be understood fully only by an Irish mind". Ashenden rebukes his uncouth controller, "In my youth I was always taught that you should take a woman by the waist and a bottle by the neck".Ħ. Maugham becomes Ashenden in the rather authentic published work.
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With mind-boggling audacity, he decided that the best cover for his spying would be that he was writing a series of short stories about spies. Would he care for a little patriotic adventure? Maugham signed up to serve in Switzerland then revolutionary Russia, where he narrowly escaped extermination by the Bolsheviks. Maugham was already an established novelist when a senior intelligence figure dropped in at his Long Island residence. Ashenden: Or the British Agent by W Somerset Maugham (1928) But why let history get in the way of a good read?ĥ. His account was at odds with MI5's contemporary claim that it had mopped up all German spies at the start of the war.
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"The Presbyterian Cavalier" to his biographer Andrew Lownie, Buchan is a little too hot in his pursuit of sinners. Richard Hannay pursues the Black Stone spy ring even as he is being hunted down by German spies and misguided policemen. The action in this most Scottish of thrillers takes place further west, in the remote heatherlands of Galloway. The John Buchan Way is a lovely undulating walk alongside the Tweed Valley. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915) Verloc was a precursor to the anti-hero of the modern novel.Ĥ. The cast includes the Professor, a specialist in infernal machines who at all times carries a bomb in readiness for a suicide attack. His controller, Mr Vladimir, tasks him with blowing up the Greenwich Observatory. Mr Verloc, the protagonist of his novel, is an avowed anarchist, but also an agent provocateur for the thinly-disguised Russian embassy in London. The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale by Joseph Conrad (1907) In 1922 he suffered death by firing squad in the course of the Irish civil war, telling his American-born wife on the eve of his execution that he still loved England.ģ.
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A footnote: on the eve of the war, the Anglo-Irish Childers used his own yacht to smuggle German arms to Ireland to help the cause of independence. Childers debunkers pointed out that Frisian waters were too shallow for warships and the hinterland had no warehousing facilities to serve the needs of an invasion. They obtain evidence to prove that Germany is planning an invasion of England. Negotiating the Frisian coast in his yacht Dulcibella, Arthur Davies is accompanied by his Foreign Office chum Carruthers. If you enjoyed Swallows and Amazons, check this out. The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service Recently Achieved by Erskine Childers (1903) Birch inverted that logic in his explanation of why they could rely on his silence: "Tell them I would not take the gold!"Ģ. Birch's case officer, the future president George Washington, hears complaints after the war that the retired spy might prove to be loose-tongued – the new United States had no hold on him, as it had never paid him a salary. The impecunious spy "belonged to a condition in life which rendered him the least reluctant to appear in so equivocal a character". The Spy or, A Tale of the Neutral Ground by James Fenimore Cooper (1821)Ī factually-based account of the exploits of Harvey Birch, a secret agent in the American War of Independence.
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