Stilgherrian » spookland

Another Tale of Two Thrillers

Stilgherrian — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 04:18:13 +0000

One of my six special vices is reading thrillers, often very trashy ones. So it was an especially wonderful pleasure to read two thrillers in a week — from opposite ends of the trashiness spectrum.

Adrian D’Hagé’s action thriller The Beijing Conspiracy is like demolishing a slab of VB with mates on a Friday night. It’s loud, fast-paced and perhaps a little clichéd. But it’s great fun and you know you’ll be back for more. I ploughed through it in less than 24 hours.

By comparison, William Gibson’s Spook Country is like a richly textured cabernet merlot. Take it slowly to appreciate the subtleties, and your time will be generously rewarded.

He was Brigadier Adrian d’Hagé when I first encountered him as Head of Defence Public Relations in Canberra. Him, not me. I was working for ABC Radio in Adelaide. I didn’t realise then that he’s a Genuine War Hero, recipient of the Military Cross for something he did in Vietnam. He subsequently headed up defence planning for the Sydney Olympics, became a research scholar in Arab & Islamic Studies, a wine scientist and a ski instructor. Oh, and a best-selling novelist. A complete failure in life.

His first novel The Omega Scroll wasn’t just a beautifully-timed entry into the market, following Mr Brown’s over-rated thing about secret scrolls, it was a fine read. This second novel is just as good — and just as perfectly timed.

The Beijing Conspiracy concerns a terrorist plot planned for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. It involves Muslims (non-Arab), biological warfare, corrupt politicians (American), an independently-minded scientist (Australian, female), a hunky secret agent (American, FBI, male), a love interest (see preceding) and everything you could pack into a novel like this. I don’t think I’ll be giving away too much if I mention that Sydney is the target of one particularly creative terrorist operation.

I suspect d’Hagé puts his own thoughts into the mouths of his characters — in this book anger with the corruption of of American politicians regarding the Iraq War, in The Omega Scroll anger with Vatican corruption. But I’m sure he’d tell me that this is just a work of fiction. After all, the evil American corporation connected to the Vice-President is a Big Pharma outfit called Halliwell, which is nothing even remotely like Halliburton.

The Beijing Conspiracy Is A Great Read. Yes, structured absolutely according to the genre, but that’s the point. Can’t wait for a movie.

Now William Gibson…

What can you say about the Grand Master of Cyberpunk that hasn’t already been said? Nothing. So I won’t bother trying.

I only need to say that Spook Country is a worthy addition to the Master’s bibliography, and quote a few words from the Wired interview.

Like Pattern Recognition before it, William Gibson’s eighth novel, Spook Country, feels like dictation from the zeitgeist. Its “illegal facilitators,” non-existent magazines, terrorists, pirates, junkies, mad art dealers, and WMD are all woven together into something more unsettling and blackly comic than anything he’s done before.

Buy this book, and then make sure you have plenty of uninterrupted time to read it.

Bonus links:

William Gibson’s official website, including an interview about Spook Country and blog
A Tale of Two Thrillers, my previous double review

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A Tale of Two Thrillers

Stilgherrian — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 19:57:23 +0000

Despite working an exhausting 65 hours last week, somehow I found time to knock off two books, both thrillers. One thrilled, one disappointed.

Stella Rimington was head spook at MI5, so she presumably knows how The Game is played. I’d enjoyed her first novel, At Risk, a fairly standard spy thriller featuring female intelligence officer Liz Carlisle. So I figured the second Carlisle tale would be worth a read.

Alas, Secret Asset is disappointing.

The main theme is a nice new twist — an IRA mole doesn’t disappear quietly once The Troubles die down, but instead decides to “screw the Brits” generally with the aid of some Pakistanis. And the pacey writing kept me reading.

But there’s a difference between archetype and stereotype — and the supporting characters are stereotypes. Resident geek-spook “Technical Ted” has a ponytail and swoons into a virtual orgasm when challenged to read data from ancient floppy discs. And the analyst on loan from MI6 is bookish, a former librarian even. The ending’s a cop-out too — but I won’t spoil it.

What grated most, though, were the wave-the-flag patriotic moments. Sohail, a Pakistani law student, for instance, was reading English Torts: A Casebook:

He liked the precision and arid tautness of its prose. The book was almost theoretical in its abstraction, but unlike the Islamic literature he was surrounded by during the day, English law seemed incapable of perversion in the hands of fanatics.

Oh please! The Empire saved by the OED? OK, it’s standard practice for “retired” spooks to add to the propaganda pool, but a little subtlety might be in order from one of The Greats.

Still, Stella kept me moderately amused before bedtime two nights in a row, which at $32.95 is cheaper than a hooker. The Liz Carlisle stories will make excellent fodder for ABC TV’s Friday night sessions.

By comparison, John Birmingham did thrill me with Final Impact because it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than cheap trashy action — and it’s a bloody fine example of the genre.

“Birmingham’s an arsehole,” I used to think — another story for another time. Now I’ve read all but one of his books and loved each and every one.

Final Impact is the third (final?) Axis of Time novel, set in an alternate World War II where a 21st Century naval task force — replete with stealth ships, multicultural crews and nukes — finds itself at the Battle of Midway.

Yes, the “contemporary war-fighters do The Time Warp” trope has been done before. But this is a well-crafted yarn, following on nicely from Weapons of Choice and Designated Targets. Where those books cover the initial “Emergence” and then the issues facing the integration of the 21C and WWII forces, Final Impact is the end-play and the Race for The Bomb — with plenty of surprises along the way.

Birmingham scatters the books with quirky references — Prince Harry as an SAS colonel — and even has Himmler cracking jokes! As the SS supremo struggles to work his high-tech “flexipad” he finds…

… the Windows file management system a diabolical confoundment. And they accuse me of crimes against humanity, he thought as he settled himself at his desk. Willhelm Gates, you are a beast and your family will pay.

Sure, it’s all Boy’s Own action with plenty of technical detail and blood’n'gore. But that’s what the genre is about. And it’s appropriate that Time compares him favourably with the genre master Tom Clancy.

As it happens, today is John Birmingham’s birthday. So what better cheapskate present than to tell him, “Mate, loved your book. Two thumbs up.”

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Spying for Liars

Stilgherrian — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 17:27:20 +0000

The Australian government’s habit of playing fast and loose with the truth increases the risk of our spooks becoming traitors, warns a former intelligence officer.

Warren Reed is 10-year veteran of the “Australian Secret Intelligence Service”:http://www.asis.gov.au (ASIS), and in yesterday’s “_Sydney Morning Herald_”:http://www.smh.com.au he says that when a government repeatedly lies and flaunts the fact that political survival is more important than truth, “a fundamental compact with the intelligence community is broken (Mission Impossible: Spying for Liars by Warren Reed)”:http://smh.com.au/news/opinion/mission-impossible-spying-for-liars/2006/03/09/1141701631482.html?page=fullpage.

bq. Imagine putting your life at risk to gather intelligence, only to be told your report wasn’t distributed because “it’s not what the Government wants to hear”. If you were overseas with the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, would you bother sending back a report off the Indian Prime Minister’s desk briefing him on John Howard’s key personality traits and how his ego could be stroked to win concessions for India? …

bq. Who would care? In today’s heavily politicised Canberra, you’d be classified as some upstart, intent on embarrassing the “Australian Security Intelligence Organisation”:http://www.asio.gov.au (ASIO) and hence the Government.

After reminding us of ASIO’s apparently poor track record in catching foreign spies on Australian soil, he reminds us that…

bq. Most countries that catch foreign spies and the traitors selling the secrets have their security services run by people with good records in intelligence. Not bureaucrats who win the prime minister’s favour.

bq. So, what of that compact broken when a government values lies over truth? Most… simply get on with the job, hoping they never fall foul of Canberra’s draconian measures for detecting heretics…

bq. The worst danger is that a small number of people with access, whether through greed or to pay mortgages and school fees, will be tempted to turn traitor… For that number, when a government brazenly portrays lying as a virtue, it’s dead easy to decide.

bq. Why bother to be loyal? Who cares? The Government is interested only in itself, and the public only in low interest rates. But I have access to valuable secrets: a commodity convertible into cash, if not other rewards in kind. Oh, and the money can be paid into a foreign trust account if I wish.

Well put, Warren.

But it goes much further than that. It breaks the compact with _us_, the citizens of Australia.

When we create national intelligence services we select from the best and brightest, hand them the latest high-tech gadgetry, and grant them the power to listen to our communications, to sneak into our homes without asking and to break laws us ordinary folk cannot — both here and overseas. They might even kill people, for all we know. And all in secret.

In return, we have to take it on trust that all this is done in our interest. _Our_ interest, Mr Howard, Us, the Australian people. Not the interest of the incumbent government of the day and their cronies.