Today’s
guest blog is by author Edward Wilson.
He is the author of 5 novels the most recent being A Very British Ending.
The
great thing about crime fiction is that it involves the reader. The classic
English murder mystery provides a taunting list of red herrings and cryptic
clues that test the reader’s powers of perception and attention to detail. The
reader becomes a sleuth.
As a
writer of spy fiction, I want to involve the reader at every level. At the end
of The Murder at the Vicarage we know
who killed Colonel Protheroe. But at the end of my books, I want the reader to
still be guessing who was or was not a Soviet mole – a mystery, by the way,
still much debated by non-fiction writers. The fictionalised ghost of Kim
Philby weaves in and out of my books like a malevolent grinning imp. Was he a
double agent betraying Britain or a triple agent betraying Moscow? Why was he
still on MI6’s payroll years after he had been uncovered as ‘The Third Man’? And
why was he finally allowed to slip away to Moscow just as the pincers were
closing? Was, perhaps, Philby a genuine Soviet agent after all – and was MI6’s
continued apparent trust in him a double bluff to convince the Sovs that their
prize agent had been turned and tripled? The legendary CIA spy chief, James
Jesus Angleton, described the world of espionage as ‘a wilderness of mirrors’.
In the end, Angleton succumbed to clinical paranoia and had to be removed from
post. I don’t want that to happen to my readers, but I do want to stretch their
imaginations.
Crime
fiction isn’t just about who did it, but why they did it. And so is spy
fiction. The first thing they teach you at spy school is MICE. The acronym
represents the four ways to recruit an agent: Money, Ideology, Coercion,
Excitement. (Excitement also covers ego needs and sex; the honey-trap will
always be one of the secret agent’s most important tools.) In many ways, what motivates a person’s
action is more interesting than the action itself. Everyone knows that Jack
Kennedy was killed by a bullet to the head, but why? That is the question that
has kept conspiracy theorists going for the past fifty years. Applying MICE – was it I or E? Spy fiction is
not just about why individuals do things, but also why governments and
intelligence agencies do them. One of my books, The Midnight Swimmer, asks why Khrushchev deployed nuclear missiles
to Cuba – and then asks why he withdrew them. I suggest answers, but also leave
readers to come to their own conclusions. And why, you may ask, do I use
fiction to pose these questions? Try finding out the truth from ‘official’
histories and sanitised files.
The most
important thing a writer can do is create characters that enter and grip the readers’
imagination. Who can remember in detail a single one of Raymond Chandler’s
plots? But who can forget Philip Marlowe? I think the best way to create a
character, and I hope Chandler would have agreed, is from what the character
says and thinks aloud. But aside from that, I think the reader should be the
casting director. The reader’s own imagination should determine what the
character looks like, smells like, walks like and sounds like. When characters
are shown on my book jackets, they are only seen from the back. In terms of
motivation, I want my characters to have an air of mystery about them which is
the job of the reader to discern. One of my recurring characters, the MI6 spy
chief Henry Bone, even remains an enigma to me. I know that he was a one time
lover of Anthony Blunt, but was Bone ever a Soviet spy? Or did he cover up for
those who were? Don’t ask me; that’s for you to decide.
My first
rule as a writer is to respect my readers as thinking persons with brains of
their own. I will never dumb down. My books are often complex and require
concentration – and I make no apology for that.
On one occasion, however, I was too subtle – and this is an exclusive
for Shots Mag readers only! If you’ve got a copy of The Whitehall Mandarin, re-read page 356. Now go back and re-read
pages 25 and 26. Your call, what really happened? Likewise, I didn’t solve two mysteries in my
latest, A Very British Ending, until
after the book was printed and launched. The mysteries are:
1 Why
did the Army throw a ring of steel around Heathrow Airport in 1974?
Was it in response to a terrorist threat? Or
something more sinister?
2 Why
were there no further military exercises at Heathrow after February,
1975?
Am I a
spy writer lost in my own Wilderness of Mirrors? It doesn’t matter. Books only
come alive in the creative mind of the reader.
More
information about Edward Wilson can be found on his website. You can also follow him on Twitter @EfwilsonEdward
A
Very British Ending by Edward Wilson
A
British Prime Minister is targeted by the CIA as a threat to American
interests. A secret plot unfolds on both sides of the Atlantic to remove him
from power. An MI6 officer, haunted by the ghosts of an SS atrocity, kills a
Nazi war criminal in the ruins of a U-boot bunker. The German turns out to be a
CIA asset being rat-lined to South America. As a hungry Britain freezes in the
winter of 1947, a young cabinet minister negotiates a deal with Moscow trading
Rolls-Royce jet engines for cattle fodder and wood. Both have made powerful
enemies with long memories. The fates of the two men become entwined as one
rises through MI6 and the other to Downing Street. It is the mid-1970s and a coup d état is imminent. A Very British Ending is the Wolf Hall
of power games in modern Britain. Senior MI6 officers, Catesby and Bone, try to
outwit a cabal of plotters trying to overthrow the Prime Minister.
A Very British Ending by Edward Wilson is out now
(£14.99, Arcadia Books)
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