On “The Bourne Identity” by Robert Ludlum ****

Back in my twenties, before I had read much genre fiction, I had a view of it as largely plot based, with little in the way of character development or good turns of phrase (something I would say I found not to so much to be true, as I've aged and read more widely). As I read through the first portions of this book, my feelings were that Ludlum's work would have fit that earlier definition to the tee. The book opens with some overwritten descriptions of the sea (unneeded adjectives, redundant lines). It felt very much like someone were describing in excess the opening shots of a movie. What's more, as I read further into the book and was introduced to the characters, they seemed equally overwrought and yet not really real; they were elements, simply, in and for a plot—a plot that was, for all of its turns and twists—highly ridiculous.

But if Ludlum's first book in the trilogy fits all the stereotypes that I carried of genre fiction, it also lives within its world exceptionally well. I found myself, even knowing that the plot was ludicrous and the characters mostly cardboard (the main character's girlfriend, after all, after being taking hostage by him, gives up everything in her life to pursue him, risking her life, because at some point he saves her life, a situation she wouldn't have been in in the first place if she hadn't been taken hostage)--even knowing all that, and knowing that Bourne will survive, because there are two more books, I found myself drawn into the plot. What's to happen next? What will Bourne do?

The novel involves a case of selective amnesia. A man finds himself with exceptional military and spy-op skills, but he doesn't know who he is and how he came to obtain such skills. Nor does he know why everyone seems to be after him. The journey is thus one of self-discovery and one of survival. The plot really gets going when the man goes to a bank in Zurich, which has an account, the numbers for which are embedded as a chip in his body. Find the account; find out who he is. Or so that's the theory. But by doing so, he alerts others of his presence and so begins the hunt for him. And even knowing his name only gives him that; who is this man with this name. Periodically, as he comes across familiar scenes or people, he gets glimpses into his past, but they remain veiled. This is spies after spies, espionage to the hilt. It doesn't feel like there's much in the way of political, cultural, or social commentary along the way, unlike say in the work of Greene or Le Carre, but unlike the latter's novel that I read, this one is much more approachable, much more entertaining, and much less dreary. I usually looked forward to reading it, and certainly didn't want to put it down as I got closer to its end--a fitting end to my short spy fiction list.

On "A Perfect Spy" by John le Carre ***

I'm a bit surprised sometimes by what manages to make it to best-seller lists. This is one of those books. Le Carre is no easy reading, engaging as he does in some high-end literary techniques. And what's left after all of it are a number of open-ended questions to ponder.

Usually, this is just my sort of balliwick, but I guess I was looking for something more absborbing. Much like some classic novels, like Pride and Prejudice, this one was a real slog until substantially into the text. I only felt compelled once I was about one hundred pages from the end. By then, a lot of the little things that le Carre had set up started to pay off. But that, of course, was part of what made the earlier passages so challenging. Why shift from sentence to sentence between first- and third-person, for instance? Who is Poppy? Wentworth? Other named people? As one gets toward the end, one starts to discover the meanings of these details.

The tail is essentially one of a spy who has decided to quit it all. He retreats to location unknown to anyone to do as he had always wanted: to write a novel (or maybe his memoirs), which is itself sort of a note to his son. Meanwhile, the spy world is all aflutter over his disappearance. Everyone wants him, because in their view he's done something heinous, but it appears at least initially that it's a hullabaloo about nothing. This two-pronged storytelling means that one set of chapters follows the current day, and the other follows the memoir. We get past and present occurrences. The difficulty is that from one chapter to the next, one is dropped in to a particular place and location without much background, meaning one is disoriented for about the first third of every chapter. When you finally start to figure out what's going on and maybe start to care, le Carre ends the chapter, and you're back in a spot of being lost. I suppose that's reflective of Magnus Pym's state (or really of many a spy), but it makes for a difficult and unsatisfying read.

In the course of the story, one runs across Magnus's conman father, his spy overseer and recruiter Brotherhood, his wife Mary, various lovers, and his best friend Axel. To what degree any of these people are who they seem, however, is difficult to know. Are his verious acquaintances and friends really that, or are they just using Magnus for their own agendas? Has Magnus actually managed to do anything of value with his life (and his spy career), or has he just been everyone's pawn?

On "Goldfinger" by Ian Fleming **

I have never liked James Bond movies, so it shouldn't have come to a surprise that I wouldn't like one of the books on which such movies are based. I chose this one for my spy fiction reading list in part because I'd confused it with Dr. No, the first James Bond movie and the only one film I've seen in the series that was at least palatable. But part of me was wary of reading the same book rather than one from a film I hadn't seen, so I'm sort of glad I got confused. The other reason I'd chosen this book was the first sentence, which seemed so incredibly absurd and in line with the Bond mystique that this seemed like a novel that would be emblematic of the series. That opening sentence essentially has Bond sitting in an airport lobby drinking whisky, smoking, and thinking about all the men he's had to kill and how he doesn't enjoy doing it. Oh yeah!

The tale itself is an unsurprising riff on Bond versus an arch nemesis--this time, Goldfinger, a man who likes to collect, um, gold. He has his heart of cornering the market. For this, he's come up with a plan to steal the gold from Fort Knox. But Bond, who sleeps with not one but two gals (and seemed like he might get a little from a third--alas, he never broke her) over the course of the novel, comes to know Goldfinger before then. First, he helps an acquaintance on a side job find out how it is that Goldfinger always wins at cards (he cheats, of course), which is how Bond meets the first gal, Goldfinger's aid in the crime. The second time, Bond is on a mission to enter Goldfinger's world to get a handle on his growing gold empire: this time, Bond plays golf with Goldfinger, who again cheats, which means that Bond has to come up with his own cheat to win. The third time Bond comes into contact, Goldfinger knows Bond is not completely on the up-and-up with him, and so it is that Bond is captured, tortured, and nearly killed, except, well, Goldfinger decides to use him in his Fort Knox scheme. That is, alas, Goldfinger's downfall, and it is also something that makes little sense, given Bond's untrustworthiness.

Goldfinger pulls in several of the top underworld criminal figures to help him. There is a long passage in which each figure is described--just as there are long passages describing the golf game. They grow cumbersome at times. Fleming is a master at physical descriptions of people. It's how he paints his world. But in that is also his failing, because there seems to be little beneath the surface. This is men's fiction, with bravado and adventure. Bond raises fast cars, drinks, kills, sleeps around; every gal he meets is a hottie to bed, and most take to him immediately because of his stunning good looks. What does anyone really want? Goldfinger wants gold. Bond seems happy chasing tail, drinking (even at times that require utmost focus), and going on adventures. Goldfinger has lots of assistants, who are loyal to him for . . . money, I guess? The women, I guess, they just want a hot guy? One doesn't read a Bond novel for penetrating character studies.

On "The Quiet American" by Graham Greene ****

I'm not sure how much this qualifies as a spy novel, though it does have lots of international intrigue. It's focus is really a newspaper reporter and a surreptitious activist (perhaps, he qualifies as a spy). It's really a love triangle story: two guys battling it out for a young Vietnamese gal name Phuong. The story is set in 1950s Vietnam, toward the end of the French role there, as the Americans begin to make a few inroads.

The two men are Fowler and Pyle. Both men are annoying and easy to dislike. Fowler is British, older, the reporter, and has Phuong as his girlfriend. He's married, and his wife (back in Britain) won't allow a divorce. This means that Phuong is nothing but a fling to him. He's using her, stringing her along, saying that one day he'll marry her, as he wants. Pyle is an American, working on distributing plastics that go in to bombs to help the Vietnamese Democratic movement (if it's that). He falls in love with Phuong at first site and sets about to make her his girlfriend and wife, despite the fact that Fowler is already involved with her. Both men are jerks in my view.

The story begins with Pyle's death. Fowler is the immediate suspect, but then the rest of the novel is told in flashback to how these two interacted and came to know each other. Despite the characters being unlikeable and the political discussions seeming somewhat dated (though I suppose they apply to any such colonial situation), the novel brings into focus some big questions about journalistic objectivity and staying outside the news to just observe it. At what point, one asks, does this become a problem as a human being caring about other humans? And at what point does a concern for the general populace become more important than a concern for the individual? These are hard questions.

On "The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad ***

I was never able to get through Lord Jim, but I was a teen at the time, and then in college I read Heart of Darkness and came to admire it--but I think that was in part because I wrote a paper on it and as such read the book several times over. This book feels like it would need to be read more than once to truly appreciate it; unfortunately, it didn't bear so much interest in me that I felt compelled or desirous of reading it a second time.

The story is one of a secret agent named Verloc who involves himself with various revolutionary anarchist groups to feed, I suppose, information to the government. But that government isn't so impressed by the information that Verloc provides. He's threatened with being cut loose.

Reverse back a bit. Verloc is married and takes care of a wife, his wife's mother, and his wife's mentally challenged brother. The everyday front he has is an adult bookstore--racy photos, books, gifts, and other stuff that men might like, though don't want anyone else to know it.

We also meet along the way the various revolutionaries and some police and law enforcement types. In the middle of the book, a bomb goes off, and a man is blown into pieces. Some witnesses say another man was with him. Who was the other man? Who was the man blown up? Much of the rest of the plot revolves around this. In the process, we see more about Verloc's character, the character of those involved in law enforcement, those involved with the government, and those involved with the revolutionary movements. No one comes off looking very well, and one feels sad for those unwittingly caught up among them.