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Book Review: Pray for a Brave Heart by Helen MacInnes
A 1950s spy novel written by a woman that intermixes early Iron Curtain fears and post-WWII concerns about missing Nazi loot.
Summary:
It was 1953, and nothing could shake Bill Denning’s resolve to leave the army and return to the States. Nothing, except one of the largest diamond hauls ever – which, in the wrong hands, on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, was a potentially lethal force. In a small village in the Swiss mountains, Denning discovered that there was not only a jewelry robbery at stake. In the ruthless world of espionage and international conspiracy his adversaries were the most unlikely people – and the most dangerous.
Review:
I picked this up antiquing with the cover you see here, and a blurb that revealed that a woman was being watched by a chinless man, and nothing else. I was expecting a romantic suspense based on those two but instead this is a spy novel. I had no idea Helen MacInnes is known as the “Queen of Spy Writers.”
The book uses third person omniscient narration style, which I hadn’t read in a while. It was interesting to see how the intrigue managed to remain when perspectives shifted to essentially everyone in the scene. How could this be so, I wondered in retrospect? Well, in spite of being omniscient, we never take the perspective of the bad guys. So we only ever take the perspective of the good guys, none of whom have everything figured out. While we go inside all of the good guys’ heads, the perspectives we take the most often are Bill Denning, his friend’s wife Paula, and her friend from school days Francesca.
The narrative device works to subtly other the Communist characters. If a character is a Communist, we never enter their head. We never see their perspective. Francesca is the sole character who shows some empathy toward those with viewpoints different from her own, and the narrative is certain to punish her for that and have her see the error of her ways. It’s an interesting example both of the Red Scare era and how writing styles can be used to reenforce viewpoints.
I felt this book was low on action. A lot of the scenes are characters talking in a room together trying to puzzle out what’s going on. The last few chapters really picked up on the action, and I wished the rest of the book was action-packed like that. There’s even a couple of scenes where characters stop to read poetry or discuss Latin. On the one hand, the literary aspect was nice. I found myself checking out a book of translated German poetry from the library. But, on the other hand, I wouldn’t call that an action packed scene.
The Swiss and Berlin settings are beautifully rendered. You really feel as if you are there. I also liked the insertion of German phrases without explanation for what they mean. In books where characters are bilingual or traveling this should really be done more often. It gives more of a sense of the travel. Plus the reader can look up the phrases if they really want to.
Overall, this is a decent spy novel, if a bit slow-paced. It’s a good view into the Red Scare era. Others suggest that if you are interested in Helen MacInnes’s writing to start with one of her WWII spy novels such as Above Suspicion or Assignment in Brittany.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 284 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: purchased
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
April 2018 Book Reviews – Kushiel’s Avatar (#fantasy), Please Forgive Me (#romance), The Song of Hiawatha (#poetry), A River in Darkness (#memoir), The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (#espionage), Pennterra (#scifi)
Reading poolside in Florida. For more shots check out my bookstagram.
Wow what a busy month! After only completing one book in March, in April I finished a walloping six! Let’s get right to it.
I read quite a bit of Kushiel’s Avatar by Jacqueline Carey while on a business trip to Orlando, Florida in April (um, where I got to wrestle an alligator YES THAT HAPPENED). Ahem, anyway, this fantasy chunkster finishes up Phedre’s Trilogy and it was the perfect companion for a business trip since I was definitely not going to find the time to finish it while on the trip so it could keep me company throughout. Anyway, if you’ve heard of the trilogy and have been intrigued by it, suffice to say that I found the conclusion to be an improvement on the second book but didn’t live up to the first. I appreciated the artistry of the ending but I personally wasn’t a fan of how Phedre’s life ended up, which I think soured it a bit for me. But not enough to not put the first book in the next trilogy in this world on my tbr list.
(4 out of 5 stars, buy it)
(Source: Paperbackswap? Maybe? I bought it somewhere)
Next I picked up Melissa Hill’s romance Please Forgive Me. This piece of modern Irish literature follows our heroine from Ireland to San Francisco where she tries to outrun her problems. I found the Irish interpretation of California (not least of which the idea of how the main character can just show up and work under the table and that’s fine) to be pretty hilarious. Three couples are ultimately presented where someone did something “wrong” but no one seems to think all of the running away is particularly wrong? This was one of those classic there would be no problems if everyone would just act like adults instead of impulsive children types of chick lit books. If you’re ok with that and the idea of an Irish take on California appeals to you, you may have found your next read.
(3 out of 5 stars, buy it)
(Source: Amazon)
Next something possessed me to finally get around to reading the copy of The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which is I believe out of copyright and has been hanging out on my kindle forever. By “something possessed me” I mean like many other New England children I was forced to memorize (and PERFORM) “Paul Revere’s Ride” (read it in its full glory) and I was curious if the other Longfellow epic poem lives up to Paul Revere. Um. It does not. Here’s the thing. Longfellow’s style works great for a piece about a time very close to his own and his own people in a short form. It does not work great in a full length book based on his interviews with Native Peoples and his attempts at writing down the language. It basically consists of Hiawatha telling the different nations to stop warring and unite or they’d be over-run by white people. It felt a bit…victim blamey to me. Also then in the final chapter missionaries arrive, Hiawatha welcomes them, tells his people they have a very important message and to be nice to them, then sails off in what I think is a metaphor for his death. So Hiawatha is a hero for telling those silly Native nations to unite to fight off white people but also recognizing the salvation message. Okayyyyy. I kept reading it because I thought it must get better. It did not. Stick to Paul Revere’s Ride.
(2 out of 5 stars, buy it)
(Source: no idea anymore)
I received my next read free from Amazon thanks to the Kindle First program, and I feel like I caught it just at its popularity wave – Masaji Ishikawa’s memoir A River in Darkness: One Man’s Escape from North Korea. Masaji Ishikawa is half-Japanese and half-Korean. His Korean father moved the family to North Korea based on promises of a better life when he was 13 years old. Masaji’s life has been incredibly hard – not just in North Korea but also in Japan. When he was a child, he faced racism in Japan because he was half-Korean, and when he escaped back to Japan he faced many difficulties repatriating (for instance, they housed him in a half-house with recovering addicts, while that is a home, you can imagine it would be difficult to repatriate in such a situation). Masaji has lost so much family; it’s overwhelming. I think he’s brave for telling his story, and I encourage anyone interested in helping North Koreans to check out the well-rated charity Liberty in North Korea. While this story is incredibly important, to me personally the pacing was a bit off. Maybe it wasn’t in the original Japanese.
(4 out of 5 stars, buy it)
(Source: Amazon)
While I was reading these other books, I was also reading my audiobook The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le Carre. I picked this up because it’s supposed to be a classic involving the Berlin Wall. This is about a British spy and basically the whole book is the question of is he loyal to the West or not? The book begins and ends at the Berlin Wall. I found the beginning very engaging and the end was exciting, but the middle dragged. I’m glad I stuck with it for the end, though. Also there’s a love interest who is a librarian in this, which was exciting for me! Recommended if you like spy novels.
(4 out of 5 stars, buy it)
(Source: Audible)
I finished out the month with a 1987 female written scifi – Pennterra by Judith Moffet. Basically there’s an alien planet colonized by Quakers (because Earth is dying and spaceships of groups of people who have something in common are leaving Earth looking for places to live). Of course there’s an indigenous people who resemble large insects and communicate both vocally and through emotive telepathy. I’d read this book was an exploration on the power of pacifism for resolving conflict, BUT I didn’t find much pacifist negotiation. They just do what the locals tell them to do and obey the rules put upon them. That’s pacifist, sure, but is that negotiation? I thought the planet being alive in and of itself and resisting invaders was fascinating. I thought seeing how children who arrive on the planet at the age of 7 are different and able to adapt was fascinating. I did not think that human children going through puberty and proceeding to behave like the locals sexually in ways that involved the adult humans who never adapted to the planet themselves to be logical (beyond the gross factor). Basically the locals have sex with everyone who’s hit puberty. The human children who hit puberty do the same with adults who don’t feel the natural inclination to go native and so feel guilty about it. What this ultimately means is the author ends up equating bisexualty and polyamory with incest and bestiality. No scenes are particularly graphic but the idea is that it’s ok for the human kids to do it because that’s how the local planet works. But it’s…..not. And it was very uncomfortable for me to see these things being equated. That said that is a minor plotpoint that I was able to skip over easily enough and I was interested in how the planet was going to defend itself, and I found it hilarious how the planet ultimately defends itself. I just wish the author had had going native in the human adolescents to just be bisexuality and/or polyamory and stopped short of the rest. Because they are still HUMANS even if they’ve had to adapt to the environment.
(4 out of 5 stars, buy it)
(Source: Paperbackswap)
Phew, what a month! My total for the month of April 2018:
- 6 books
- 5 fiction; 1 nonfiction
- 3 female authors; 3 male authors
- 3 ebooks; 2 print books; 1 audiobook
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Book Review: Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott
Summary:
Abbott looks at the little discussed role of women in the Civil War by highlighting the lives of four different women spies, two with loyalties to the South and two to the North. By following their lives through the Civil War, Abbott demonstrates the critical role women played in the Civil War that is too often silenced.
Review:
Doing Dewey’s review of this book landed it on my wishlist, and I was really pleased to receive it for Christmas. It was everything I’d expected it to be. A look at the Civil War through a women’s history perspective and told in an easy to follow style with lots of respect for the historical source material.
Abbott notes at the beginning of the book that she only uses quotation marks around information she is directly quoting from source material. I knew from that second forward I was going to enjoy this work of nonfiction, because too often authors stray either too far toward hearsay and imagining how people felt or too far toward distancing themselves from anything other than the driest facts. Abbott beautifully switches among the four different women, following the timeline of the Civil War and telling their stories simultaneously. This lends a clearer perspective on the Civil War than I had before. It puts a humanizing eye on real events.
So who are the four women highlighted in this book? On the side of the North, there’s Emma Edmonds, who had already been living as a man to escape a marriage being forced upon her by her family. Emma enlisted as a Union soldier and soon wound up spying for them — pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman to cross the lines. There’s also Elizabeth Van Lew and her freed slave Mary Bowser in Richmond who worked together to spy on the Confederate president. On the side of the South there’s Rose O’Neale Greenhow, a socialite in DC who used her affairs with Northern politicians to spy. There is also Belle Boyd, a boisterous woman at first more interested in notoriety than in helping any cause but whose loyalty to the South became ever more strong.
This book makes it clear that women made ideal spies thanks to sexism. The men of the North and South both viewed women as the “delicate sex” that would never actually participate in anything so soiled as war, so when they attempted to cross the lines, they would be let through without being searched. The more high class a woman, the more protection she was afforded, so even though women were under suspicion, they were always treated better than men under the same suspicion. For instance, Belle Boyd was caught red-handed as a spy once. The penalty for a man would be death, but she was sent to prison and then later paroled and sent back to the South, basically with a slap on the wrist and demand she not do that again. Another example, in the case of Elizabeth Van Lew,
For now, at least, her social position and gender served as her most convincing disguise. No one would believe that a frail, pampered spinster was capable of plotting treasonous acts, let alone carrying them out right under the government’s nose. (page 47)
Abbott does a good job of presenting the reality of these women’s lives and their politics matter-of-factly with little judgment from the future. The women are allowed to basically speak for themselves, and the reader can ultimately decide how they feel about them. Abbott maintains the historic feel by referring to African-Americans as “Negroes.” This may bother some readers, and they should be aware to expect it.
The only element of the book that disappointed me was how the author handled Mary Bowser. First, this woman is not one of the four featured in the book description or the title, and yet she served as a spy inside the Confederacy presidential household. Mary Bowser was freed from slavery at a young age by Van Lew’s family. The Van Lew’s sent her North to be educated and kept her on in the household as a free servant. When Elizabeth heard that Confederate President Davis’s household needed more servants, she talked to Mary about her serving there. This educated and highly intelligent woman (she was rumored to have a photographic memory) proceeded to pretend to be the stupid, subservient person the Davises were expecting through their racism, and thus was able to do things like dust President Davis’s desk and memorize upcoming troop movements to report later. It was thanks to her work in conjunction with Elizabeth, who organized how to get the information out of the South to the North, that the Union was able to know so many of the Confederacy moves ahead of time. Yet, she is not featured as one of the four main women in the book. She is not listed as one of the women spies. The end of her life after the Civil War is not mentioned, not even to say whether or not Abbott was able to find any information about her. For a book highlighting the lives of those often erased from history, writing Mary as Elizabeth’s sidekick was quite disappointing.
The book ends by telling the reader what ultimately happened in these women’s lives after the Civil War. It’s a bit of a sad note, particularly for the Union women who fought for freedom and yet wound up with little of it themselves.
At last Elizabeth retreated, withdrawing entirely from public life. She had no target for her ferocious will. Her one political act was to attach a note of “solemn protest” to her annual tax payment, declaring it unjust to tax someone who was denied the vote. (page 426)
Overall, this book covers the history of the Civil War from the unique women’s history perspective of women spies. Those looking for an engaging alternate way to learn about Civil War history will enjoy this book and learning about the women who had an impact on history.
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 533 pages – chunkster
Source: Gift
Book Review: The Hornet’s Sting: The Amazing Untold Story Of Second World War Spy Thomas Sneum by Mark Ryan (Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge)
Summary:
Thomas Sneum was a Danish Allied spy during World War II who was periodically suspected of being a double agent. Partially due to this suspicion and partially due to infighting between the two British spy agencies (SIS and SOE), he never got the attention or respect he deserved. Mark Ryan, the author, found out about him and set out to get to know him. Both personally and through research. Here he tells the true story of Tommy Sneum and sets the record straight once and for all.
Review:
I picked this book up during a kindle sale because I’m a big WWII buff and who doesn’t love real life spy stories? I thought it was a sure bet, but apparently even a true life spy story can be written in a dull manner.
It’s impossible to read the book without learning a lot. For instance, I had no idea that Britain had two different spy agencies that were battling each other for control of spying missions. This infighting between the SIS and the SOE led to lack of communication and lack of a solid spy front with one, unified plan. Similarly, I didn’t know it was common practice to take people who had escaped from behind Nazi lines, train them as spies, then re-drop them back in their home countries. I always thought the resistance movement just built up from the inside and then they contacted the Allies on the outside with information. How much more complex it was is really interesting. I also loved learning more about those from occupied countries who escaped and fought in other militaries against the Nazis. In spite of learning all of these new to me facts about WWII spying, the book manages to be dull. Ryan tends to wander off on side diatribes about the intricacies of red tape and paperwork instead of focusing in on the more action-oriented, interesting bits of the spying. He also spends a lot of time giving the full name of every single person even vaguely connected with Tommy and the spying, even if they really have no impact on the story. The book could really have used a bit more streamlining and focus to keep the energy up. Just because it’s nonfiction doesn’t mean it can, or should, meander.
Tommy Sneum is hard to root for. He’s not a likable guy. He abandons his wife and infant daughter to go be a spy. That could definitely be seen as valiant, however, he expresses consistent distate for his wife and a lack of concern or care for even knowing his daughter. He certainly comes across in the book as a guy just after adventure, not so much a man looking to protect his country or his family. Similarly, Tommy express arrogance when it comes to women, claiming that they essentially would go sleep with him at the drop of a hat or a snap of his fingers. He does not come across as seeing women as people but rather as recreational objects. One story that really demonstrates this is he tells the author that he had a threesome once, and he was upset that the women dared to pay attention to each other at all, rather than 100% to him. Sex is supposed to be about people giving to each other, not about one person being worshiped. His general attitude towards women gave me a squicky feeling throughout the book. Of course, most people are not all bad or good. Tommy is no exception. He expresses a real openness toward a male colleague who was known to be bi. He refuses to view all Germans as evil monsters and insists, to those high up in the British resistance no less, that most Germans are just caught up in Hitler’s war machine. Of course, these even-handed views are almost universally held of men.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is Ryan’s investigation into the accusations that Sneum was a double-agent. This part of the book isn’t really played up in the blurb, which I think is unfortunate. Ryan did a lot of investigative work and lays out all the details that he believes clears Sneum’s name. Seeing how Sneum and his methods were misunderstood by the British and also how having two different spy agencies working led to misunderstandings was truly fascinating, and I’m glad Ryan took the time to work at finding the truth.
Overall, this is a rather slow-paced work of historic nonfiction that focuses in on the red tape and organizational aspects of spying more than exciting adventures. It does good work in determining that Sneum was not a double agent in WWII. Sneum’s womanizing can be a bit tedious at times, although his even-handed perspective on the German people is good to see. Recommended to those interested in the organizational aspects of spying in WWII, including very minute details.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
Buy It
Note: Apparently this book is no longer available on the kindle.
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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