Saturday, February 28, 2015
Friday, February 20, 2015
Book Review: The Eye of the Needle
Ken Follett
1978
Awards: Edgar
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ –
This book is a blockbuster page-turner with all the ingredients - war,
sex, human drama, and international intrigue with the fate of the free
world at stake. It also has several elements that I am a particular
sucker for: spies, WWII-era Britain, remote Scottish islands, and
violent storms at sea.
The main character is Henry Faber, a careful, ruthless, handsome German spy. Faber is known as Die Nadel (The Needle) because of the trademark stiletto he carries and with which he kills a fair number of people over the course of the book.
Traveling around the southeast coast of England in early 1944, Faber discovers that the forces the Germans have been observing building up in East Anglia, which they believe will be used to invade France at Calais, are a hoax. He even is able to take a roll of pictures of dummy cardboard planes to prove it. This leads him to the natural (and correct) conclusion that the Allies are planning to invade at Normandy instead. If he is able to let his bosses in Germany know this, it could change the entire course of the war.
Faber then tries to make his way up from London to his contact, a U-boat stationed off the coast of Scotland, before he is caught by the pesky MI5 agents on his tail. He runs into a number of frustrating delays and setbacks. Desperate, he eventually steals a fishing boat and sets out for sea in the middle of a huge storm, only to get shipwrecked on a barren, windswept island populated by only four people: an old shepherd, a young farmer who lost his legs in a car accident, the farmer’s sexy estranged wife, and their baby son.
The shepherd and farmer are immediately hostile and suspicious, but the wife, Lucy, is quite receptive to Faber... to say the least. The challenge for Die Nadel then is to elude the two men, find a way to contact the U-boat by radio or boat, and to avoid getting distracted by falling in love with Lucy.
Like The Day of the Jackal,
the story is told primarily from the point of view of the bad guy.
This can get emotionally confusing. On the one hand, Faber is the
enemy and you want him to get caught, and you don’t like that he kills
Home Guards and innocent rooming house landladies. But, on the other
hand, almost up to the very end, you root for him to win his
hand-to-hand fights and to get it on with Lucy.
The details of spycraft are not as gritty and realistic as in, say, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - but then again, Follett doesn’t have the advantage of a background in British intelligence like LeCarré does.
This review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.
1978
Awards: Edgar
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ –
This book is a blockbuster page-turner with all the ingredients - war,
sex, human drama, and international intrigue with the fate of the free
world at stake. It also has several elements that I am a particular
sucker for: spies, WWII-era Britain, remote Scottish islands, and
violent storms at sea.The main character is Henry Faber, a careful, ruthless, handsome German spy. Faber is known as Die Nadel (The Needle) because of the trademark stiletto he carries and with which he kills a fair number of people over the course of the book.
Traveling around the southeast coast of England in early 1944, Faber discovers that the forces the Germans have been observing building up in East Anglia, which they believe will be used to invade France at Calais, are a hoax. He even is able to take a roll of pictures of dummy cardboard planes to prove it. This leads him to the natural (and correct) conclusion that the Allies are planning to invade at Normandy instead. If he is able to let his bosses in Germany know this, it could change the entire course of the war.
Faber then tries to make his way up from London to his contact, a U-boat stationed off the coast of Scotland, before he is caught by the pesky MI5 agents on his tail. He runs into a number of frustrating delays and setbacks. Desperate, he eventually steals a fishing boat and sets out for sea in the middle of a huge storm, only to get shipwrecked on a barren, windswept island populated by only four people: an old shepherd, a young farmer who lost his legs in a car accident, the farmer’s sexy estranged wife, and their baby son.
The shepherd and farmer are immediately hostile and suspicious, but the wife, Lucy, is quite receptive to Faber... to say the least. The challenge for Die Nadel then is to elude the two men, find a way to contact the U-boat by radio or boat, and to avoid getting distracted by falling in love with Lucy.
 |
| Donald Sutherland and Kate Nelligan are pensive in the 1981 screen adaptation of this blockbuster. |
The details of spycraft are not as gritty and realistic as in, say, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - but then again, Follett doesn’t have the advantage of a background in British intelligence like LeCarré does.
This review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Fact vs. Fiction in The Imitation Game
In December, L.V. Anderson published an article on Slate.com called "How Accurate Is The Imitation Game?" which went item by item through the film to see how close it was to reality.
The verdict: not too darned close. As Anderson says,
Other than that, well ... not much else sticks to the facts. His co-workers say he was a
very likeable guy, he was quite open about his sexuality, he likely never even knew John Cairncross (the man who turned out to be a Soviet spy), and
there's no indication that he ever needed to separate his carrots and
peas.
Ah, well... I enjoyed the movie anyway.
The verdict: not too darned close. As Anderson says,
I discovered that The Imitation Game takes major liberties with its source material, injecting conflict where none existed, inventing entirely fictional characters, rearranging the chronology of events, and misrepresenting the very nature of Turing’s work at Bletchley Park. At the same time, the film might paint Turing as being more unlovable than he actually was.It appears that the only the truly accurate parts of the film were that Alan Turing worked at Bletchley Park during World War II, that he was trying to crack the German Enigma machine, and that he worked on the prototype of the modern computer.
Other than that, well ... not much else sticks to the facts. His co-workers say he was a
very likeable guy, he was quite open about his sexuality, he likely never even knew John Cairncross (the man who turned out to be a Soviet spy), and
there's no indication that he ever needed to separate his carrots and
peas.Ah, well... I enjoyed the movie anyway.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Friday, February 6, 2015
Book Review: Citizen Vince
Jess Walter
2005
Awards: Edgar
Rating: ★ ★ – – –
SPOILER ALERT
This book started out with promise but ended up being a disappointment.
Part of my disappointment was in the ridiculously unrealistic naiveté of the gangsters. The other part was that I let myself get cool ideas about what might happen to the main character, but what actually happened was not nearly as exciting as what I had imagined.
The main character, Marty Hagen, is a small-time hood from New York
City. He had a successful racket going in credit-card theft until he got
himself in debt to some bigger-time hoods. He then turned state’s
evidence, was put into the witness protection program, took a new name
(Vince Camden), and moved to Spokane, Washington, where he became a
baker in a doughnut shop.
The story opens in Spokane when, unfortunately, Vince’s old life has caught up to him in the form of a hit man sent by his New York creditors to kill him after they discovered where he was living.
It’s a typical formula for a gangster book – an essentially well-meaning, nonviolent hood trying to work towards a better, less felonious life.
What I liked about it was that it takes place in 1980, during the last few months leading up to the Carter/Reagan election. Vince, who had never cared for politics in the past, and who certainly has enough to deal with already with the hit man after him, gets more and more distracted by the race until it’s almost all he can think about. He gets his voter registration card, goes to hear politicians speak, and even befriends a guy running for local office. It gives him a new focus and new reasons for pursuing his dreams.
The politics give a colorful background and atmosphere to the otherwise run-of-the-mill plot. Vince hears Reagan’s now-legendary one-liners and reads headlines about the hostage negotiations with Iran and has to react and interpret them in real time, as we had to, without the benefit of hindsight. There are even a couple short entertaining sections written from Carter’s and Reagan’s points of view (judiciously informed by the twenty-five years that passed between then and when the book was written).
The problem is that the political background is just that–background. At first, I thought for sure that Vince was going to get more deeply involved in it and maybe even run for office himself. He shows a natural ability for it and makes contacts very quickly. I thought it would end up being a story about redemption through public service, or at the very least an ironic statement about the type of person it takes to succeed in politics. But it doesn’t. Vince never does anything besides vote, and even that, by the time he does it, seems a bit pointless and hollow. (Even for me, a rabid voter.)
The other problem with this book that I mentioned earlier is that the gangsters really do not act like gangsters. Get this: When Vince realizes that his creditors in New York have sent a hit man to kill him, he flies to New York, finagles his way into a poker game with them, reveals who he is, and tells them that he is in witness protection. He then tells them that he bears them no ill will, that he will pay them back everything that he owes them, and that he has had an epiphany and that all he wants to do is to go back to Spokane and become a full-time donut baker, and he does this so convincingly that they believe him, and they let him go back to Spokane, with only a relatively minor favor to do in return.
Come on. I watched The Sopranos. I know they had to kill Adriana once she got caught by the Feds, no matter what she promised or how much Christopher loved her. No way would these guys let a snitch leave New York alive.
An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.
2005
Awards: Edgar
Rating: ★ ★ – – –
SPOILER ALERT
This book started out with promise but ended up being a disappointment.
Part of my disappointment was in the ridiculously unrealistic naiveté of the gangsters. The other part was that I let myself get cool ideas about what might happen to the main character, but what actually happened was not nearly as exciting as what I had imagined.
The main character, Marty Hagen, is a small-time hood from New York
City. He had a successful racket going in credit-card theft until he got
himself in debt to some bigger-time hoods. He then turned state’s
evidence, was put into the witness protection program, took a new name
(Vince Camden), and moved to Spokane, Washington, where he became a
baker in a doughnut shop.The story opens in Spokane when, unfortunately, Vince’s old life has caught up to him in the form of a hit man sent by his New York creditors to kill him after they discovered where he was living.
It’s a typical formula for a gangster book – an essentially well-meaning, nonviolent hood trying to work towards a better, less felonious life.
What I liked about it was that it takes place in 1980, during the last few months leading up to the Carter/Reagan election. Vince, who had never cared for politics in the past, and who certainly has enough to deal with already with the hit man after him, gets more and more distracted by the race until it’s almost all he can think about. He gets his voter registration card, goes to hear politicians speak, and even befriends a guy running for local office. It gives him a new focus and new reasons for pursuing his dreams.
The politics give a colorful background and atmosphere to the otherwise run-of-the-mill plot. Vince hears Reagan’s now-legendary one-liners and reads headlines about the hostage negotiations with Iran and has to react and interpret them in real time, as we had to, without the benefit of hindsight. There are even a couple short entertaining sections written from Carter’s and Reagan’s points of view (judiciously informed by the twenty-five years that passed between then and when the book was written).
The problem is that the political background is just that–background. At first, I thought for sure that Vince was going to get more deeply involved in it and maybe even run for office himself. He shows a natural ability for it and makes contacts very quickly. I thought it would end up being a story about redemption through public service, or at the very least an ironic statement about the type of person it takes to succeed in politics. But it doesn’t. Vince never does anything besides vote, and even that, by the time he does it, seems a bit pointless and hollow. (Even for me, a rabid voter.)
The other problem with this book that I mentioned earlier is that the gangsters really do not act like gangsters. Get this: When Vince realizes that his creditors in New York have sent a hit man to kill him, he flies to New York, finagles his way into a poker game with them, reveals who he is, and tells them that he is in witness protection. He then tells them that he bears them no ill will, that he will pay them back everything that he owes them, and that he has had an epiphany and that all he wants to do is to go back to Spokane and become a full-time donut baker, and he does this so convincingly that they believe him, and they let him go back to Spokane, with only a relatively minor favor to do in return.
Come on. I watched The Sopranos. I know they had to kill Adriana once she got caught by the Feds, no matter what she promised or how much Christopher loved her. No way would these guys let a snitch leave New York alive.
An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Cheeze Blog.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
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