Ted Allbeury (1917–2005)

This book, published in 1984, is an Old School Cold Warrior Tale. The West kicks ass on the East, and the British James Bondian character can take on all-comers with one arm tied behind his back.

It was okay, and I found it sort of interesting due to the setting. It reminded me a bit of the Bartle Bull Anton Rider books as it mostly takes place in that corner of Africa, among similarly exotic NE African cultures, and the parade of colonial powers that have touched them.

The writing itself is show more dated; super undercover expat / (ex-) British secret agent can get away with anything because he is, of course, super undercover expat / (ex-) British secret agent. For instance, he is able to sneak around a super secret arms dump in the middle of the desert that no one knows about, killing people at said super secret arms dump on two separate occasions, and then being able to sneak around super secret arms dump in the middle of nowhere a third time and none of the hundreds of people guarding the super secret arms dump in the middle of nowhere can manage to stop him. Sure, that sounds right, not a problem.

So there's that. To continue on with that theme, the ex-secret agent of an ex-super power was full-on neocolonialist with his I can do whatever I want whenever I want because everyone is a lesser mortal attitude; I operate at will, and I will get the girl and / or save the prostitute – who is half my age – and we will get along famously.

That was pretty much the book, but then at the very end – literally the last few pages - there was a surprising twist where the ex-secret agent has the full realization that everything he was doing, and had done sucked. He had a complete change of heart and a complete change of outlook; basically he opened his eyes for the first time in his entire life. Almost made for an upgraded rating, almost.... show less

This is a chilling book. In the prologue an English MP is asking a question in the House of Commons concerning the official betrayal of a SOE network in occupied France thirty years before, during World War 2. The first part of the book describes the setting up, operations and eventual demise of the network. The second part follows the investigation set in motion after the MP's question by a SIS agent not, it becomes plain, to shed light on the matter but rather to ensure that the true facts show more are buried as securely as the official records which, we are told are walled up deep in a disused Welsh coal mine.

I was drawn to Allbeury's work after reading a review of The Twentieth Day of January, a 'what-if' story of a US President-Elect who has won power with the covert support of Soviet Russia. This has to be a work of imagination even if the events surrounding the election of the 45th President make one wonder if it is entirely far-fetched. I heard an interview with the author, who had been a serving Intelligence officer, in which he was asked if his former masters objected to his writing. His response was that he was told he could write what he liked as long as it was described as fiction. I think most of Allbeury's stories were about the Cold War making this one unusual. To me, it rings horribly true. Military commanders always know that any operations will result in casualties - there is a quote from Field Marshal Montgomery to the effect that he expected 30,000 fatalities on the first day of the battle of El Alamein - but somehow the cold-blooded betrayal of a group of men for some perceived greater good is harder to swallow.

This book is well worth reading by anyone with an interest in the period. show less

I seem to have a very slow learning curve, which is not a comfortable admission for someone who works for the Department for Education. Uncomfortable, but unavoidable as, yet again, I found myself in the predicament of having finished my previous book without having made adequate literary provision for the commute back home. I didn’t even have my Kindle with me, and, being out of signal range, I was reduced to seeing what books were already loaded on my iPhone.

I think I downloaded this in show more a fervour of misplaced enthusiasm, after hearing about another of Allbeury’s novels, ‘The Twentieth Day of January’ which had some pertinence in the run up to President Trump’s inauguration. I chose poorly with that book, and I repeated the error here.

Perhaps my response to this book was exacerbated by the fact that I had just finished an excellent spy thriller, Mick Herron’s ‘Spook Street’ which was one of the finest in that genre that I have read. Allbeury’s book was of an entirely different character. Emotionally stilted and labouring under the weight of a plot whose implausibility matched the woodenness of its characters.

I was left wondering why Allbeury bothered. More to the point, why did I? show less

This novel has provoked considerable media interest recently, arising from its central premise of an American Presidential candidate who, between securing the election victory and being inaugurated, is investigated following suggestions that he might be subject to undue influence from the Russian government. Far-fetched or what! More intriguingly, the book was published as long ago as the early 1980s, when author Ted Allbeury was enjoying considerable success as a writer of spy thrillers.

In show more this instance, President-Elect Powell has been steered to election victory through the agency of his politically adroit right-hand man, Andrew Dempsey. Dempsey, however, has a past, and had been arrested during a violent anti-American demonstration in Paris during ‘les evenements’ in 1968., aliong with his beautiful Russian girlfriend. While most of those demonstrators who had been arrested were released within a couple of days, Dempsey and the girl were detained for two months, and only released following the intervention of a questionable American diamond dealer with shady connections to Soviet Eastern Europe. Now, twelve years later, Dempsey has re-emerged, steering the complicit but rather two dimensional Powell to election victory.

Less plausibly, no one in the American intelligence services seems aware of Dempsey’s past. It is left to James Mackay from MI5 to alert them unofficially, having recognised Dempsey from his own recollections of the riot as he had, himself, been a student in Paris in 1968. He flies over to America and works along with the CIA to investigate Powell and Dempsey urgently before the inauguration.

I think it is fair to say that the espionage novel has moved a long way since the early 1980s, and, fortuitous future topicality apart, it is not difficult to understand why Allbeury’s books have been out of print for so long. He writes clearly enough, but his characters are conspicuous for their emotional and psychological flimsiness, and plausibility is rare indeed. Still enjoyable, but perhaps principally as a curiosity. show less