Spy Novelist MacInnes Is Dead at 77

Helen MacInnes, whose 21 novels of international intrigue sold more than 23 million copies in this country alone, died Monday in a New York City hospital.

She was 77 and had suffered a stroke last month.

A one-time librarian whose accounts of espionage began with a diary she kept while touring Nazi-occupied Bavaria nearly 50 years ago, her popularity remained intact at her death. Her latest novel, “Ride a Pale Horse,” ranked fourth on the Los Angeles Times paperback best-seller list last Sunday.

“She is recognized as the creator of acute, exciting novels set against backgrounds of meaningful, present-day events,” Julian P. Muller, a vice president at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, said following her death. Muller, who was Miss MacInnes’ editor for 25 years, added that her books have been translated into 22 languages.

Four of those novels were made into motion pictures, including “Above Suspicion,” in 1943. That film starred Fred MacMurray and Joan Crawford as a honeymooning Oxford professor and his wife who were asked to find a missing British agent. The book and subsequent film were based on the diary she kept while traveling in Europe.

Three Films in 30 Years

Her other novels translated to the screen included “Assignment in Brittany” (1943), which starred Jean-Pierre Aumont and Signe Hasso; “The Venetian Affair” (1966), with Robert Vaughn and Elke Sommer; and “The Salzburg Connection” (1972), with Barry Newman and Anna Karina.

In the 1940s, the villains in Miss MacInnes’ books were Nazis; later they would be communists.

“I’m against totalitarians in general--national or religious, extremists of the right or left,” she said in a 1978 interview. “If I can be labeled anything, I am a Jeffersonian Democrat.”

She came to that political posture after receiving a degree from Glasgow University in her native Scotland in 1928 and then working as a library cataloguer in London. She married an Oxford student, Gilbert Highet. They both were fluent in German and traveled Europe earning their living as translators.

Highet, who died in 1978, was hired as a guest professor at Columbia University in New York in the late 1930s and he and his wife settled permanently in this country. They became American citizens in 1951.

Authentic Locales

Part of the success of Miss MacInnes’ output was attributed to the authenticity of her locales. Many were set in the countries she and her bridegroom visited while working as translators.

Her other spy novels included “While We Still Live,” “Horizons,” “Friends and Lovers,” “Rest and Be Thankful,” “The Double Image,” “Message from Malaga” and “Prelude to Terror.”