Book Review : Granger Tells a Tangled, Gritty Tale of Espionage

Hemingway’s Notebook by Bill Granger (Crown: $15.95)

The “November Man” wants to play dead. The hunted former operative for a U.S. intelligence service--who has appeared in four previous novels--hopes to enjoy his life with his lover, Rita, and not worry about the KGB or CIA putting a bullet in his back.

Then cunning Col. Ready turns up. Ready is so evil he makes Auric Goldfinger seem like Santa Claus. Ready blackmails November, threatening to reveal that the agent is alive. November must investigate the impending revolution on Ready’s hideaway, St. Michel, a Caribbean hellhole with as much voodoo, torture and murder as Haiti. And Rita must stay on St. Michel as a hostage while November does Ready’s bidding.

Then the Plot Tangles

Like any good spy thriller, the tale quickly gets more tangled than a plate full of spaghetti. There’s a burned-out CIA agent who has a notebook written by Ernest Hemingway. It isn’t the book’s literary quality that makes it valuable; the opus contains secrets that can embarrass the U.S. government. Adding to the intrigue are nuns on a mission of mercy, greedy dope dealers, organized crime bosses and hit men, prostitutes of varying prices, vicious secret policemen, revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries and ruthless spymasters.

Col. Ready knows how to keep them all nipping at each others’ heels as he pulls a clever quadruple-cross and takes over St. Michel. It’s up to the November Man to dethrone the conniving tyrant.

Author Bill Granger, who won the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar in 1980, is widely hailed as a leading practitioner of the international espionage thriller. His style is Hemingway-esque--staccato, gritty and often violent. For example, the scene where his hero is in a whore’s bedroom, covertly watching a couple of CIA agents who are tracking him:

What He Does Best

“She sat up on the bed and was quiet for a while. It became night. He saw the one American pass the lights of the Green Parrot. He took the Python out of the seabag and unwrapped the oil rags carefully, as though he was unwrapping baby’s diaper.” Seconds later, November does what he does best.

The November Man is one of those super-competent, lethal hombres so many of us dream of being. His miscalculation here, however, leads his girlfriend to suffer horribly. For a larger-than-life hero to risk his own neck is a noble act. To foolishly endanger the woman he loves is disappointing and incomprehensible.

Rita, in the beginning, keeps telling November Man to kill Col. Ready. She was right. But then the book would only be two dozen pages.