Saving the Queen by William F. Buckley Jr.

I am currently reading a spy novel by William F. Buckley Jr. 

Saving the Queen was his first foray into the world of fiction after founding the National Review magazine in which he wrote numerous columns asserting his conservative point of view and publishing several non-fiction books. 

This first novel was published in 1978 and takes place in the 1950s during the Cold War. The main character, Blackford Oakes, is a Yale graduate and is recruited by a friend for the CIA. His first assignment as a deep agent is to determine whether the Queen of England or one of her ministers is leaking information to the Russians about America's progress on creating a hydrogen bomb. 

If you know anything about Mr. Buckley (perhaps, as I do, you 
remember him interviewing public figures on his television show Firing Line), you will know that in his world if five words will
suffice, then twenty-five will be better. That erudition carries over into his writing although the reader doesn't have the benefit of hearing Mr. Buckley's unusual accent. Thank heavens for the Kindle dictionary which I have put to good use while reading this tale.

There are many real characters from the era who show up: Eisenhower, Truman, Churchill, Lindbergh, and Stalin. The Queen, however, is fictional. She is 31-year old Caroline who took the throne after her cousin, the reigning Queen, and her only sister were killed in an airplane crash. Queen Caroline is by far my favorite character: she appreciates the benefits of being Queen, is impatient with governmental bureaucracy, and is always on the side of her subjects. She is inquisitive, curious, and entirely unpredictable. The people love her.

I must admit I sort of glaze over the political chats that go on but that doesn't lessen my enjoyment. I do suspect I am missing wry references to certain events and ideologies. I am only a little over halfway through and am curious to see how this will turn out.

Mr. Buckley wrote eleven novels starring Blackford Oakes, a thoroughly smart, handsome, competent, and likable character. This is not a shoot-em-up-car-chase-high-tech spy yarn which suits me just fine. Mr. Buckley has created intricate back stories for his main characters and even a few for the ones we might only meet once. But that is just his way.

Now that Mr. Buckley has come into my world again, I am wanting to watch the documentary on Netflix, Best of Enemies, about his famous feud with Gore Vidal. I think they almost came to blows on live television!

A friend of mine who likes to keep up with what I am reading, wrote to me about seeing Mr. Buckley in person in the 1970s at a university event. To quote her email: "It was a lecture with questions afterward and I still remember how brilliant his vocabulary was. I was flushed with passion and wound up for about five days. Short little man, but brilliant, with bad, pitted skin. A wonderful brain and an extraordinary vocabulary. He spoke with no notes and I fell in love right then and there."

High praise indeed.

 Mr. Buckley makes his point.

The Cold War Swap by Ross Thomas

Over the weekend I read a highly entertaining book by an author I had read only once before and long ago: Ross Thomas. Titled The Cold War Swap, it is Mr. Thomas's first book - written when he was 40 - and it won the 1967 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. 

It surely gets my vote. 

Most of the action takes place in Berlin - on both sides of The Wall - during the Cold War. There is an international cast of characters as befits a lively spy novel. The main fellow, Mac McCorkle, is an American saloon owner in Bonn. His business partner, Mike Padillo, is an on-again-off-again U.S. spy and when he sends out a call for help, Mac responds. All sorts of devious goings on ensue that include getting two American defectors over/under/around The Wall, agents and double agents, car chases, bombs, and lots and lots of cigarettes and bottles of Scotch.

The action moves quickly along with enough character description and local details to keep the book grounded in The Cold War and enough history to refresh my hazy memory of that era. 

Mac is quite the witty fellow and a loyal friend and not too bad a shot when needed. There are a couple of shootings - bang, bang you're dead - the cracking of a few heads, and a sucker punch or two but no torture or stomach-turning scenes that so many thrillers seem to rely on nowadays.

Mr. Thomas wrote twenty of his tongue-in-cheek, noir-ish novels between 1966 and 1994, the year before his death. He also wrote five novels under the name of Oliver Bleeck.  These concern a fellow - Phillip St. Ives - who serves as a go-between for owners of stolen goods and the thieves who stole them in the first place. 

Many years ago, when I belonged to the Mystery Guild Book Club, I ordered and read Thomas's Chinaman's Chance but don't remember anything about it. I am sorry to say that it is no longer on my shelves; a victim of one of many culls.

But, I am happy that my library has quite a nice selection of these suspense novels to choose from. Apparently, after Ross Thomas's death, his works went oh-too-quickly out of print but were recently brought back to life by St. Martin's Minotaur division that publishes mysteries, suspense, and thrillers. 

I thank you for that, St. Martin.

A Feast of Foreign Climes

British author Ann Bridge (1889-1974) wrote a passel of novels based on her travels around the world. She also wrote a series of entertaining mysteries featuring Julia Probyn, intrepid journalist and part-time spy for British Intelligence. The first in that series, The Lighthearted Quest, took Ms. Probyn to Morocco. 

The time span in the Probyn mysteries covers the years 1956 to 1972 - a time of civilized travel - and the stories take the reader to foreign locales including Portugal, Switzerland, and Ireland. 

I bring this up because today Amazon has all eight of the Kindle editions of the mysteries published by Bloomsbury Reader (as well as other classic ones by Edmund Crispin, Margery Allingham and Nicolas Freeling) on sale for $1.99 each. I paid $7 for the first one in January 2012 when I was introduced to this globe-trotting heroine. So now it looks like I can get the remaining seven for only twice that much!

Ms. Probyn's adventures in North Africa led me to Edith Wharton's In Morocco, an account of her time spent there after World War I. Wharton stayed in the Bahia Palace, a fact mentioned in Ms. Probyn's tale. 

A case of one book leading to another, or in this case, many others.