Caught in the World of WWII Espionage
BOOK REVIEW: The Double Agent: A Novel
by William Christie / Minotaur Books
Reviewed by Edward Subut
The Reviewer — “Edward Subut” is the nom de plume of a European businessman based in Paris, who is the author of The Devil’s Banker, a novel of “betrayal and war, in a dark world where no one is what they seem to be.”
REVIEW — I approached The Double Agent from a distance as I had in mind to write a review of the novel and at the end of an afternoon of reading, I surprised myself whistling a song from the past.
Unsuspectingly, I had been dragged into the story of a lone man, Alexsi Smirnoff, a former Russian secret agent trapped between the two most brutal regimes of his days: Stalin’s Russia and Nazi Germany.
The pace at which Alexsi falls from Charybdis to Scylla grips the reader who wonders oftentimes how he will ever escape the maze in which he finds himself yet, Alexsi grinds on, only to become a pawn in the hands of the British Services who send him back into the war as their agent.
Alexsi is a killer, a liar, ruthlessly obsessed with his own survival, and I found myself rooting for him as he outsmarts the players of this deadly game.
Stand eine Laterne
Und steht sie noch davor
William Christie takes us in a maelstrom of violence, confusion and deception, at a time when the war is at a balance, when allied forces seem to advance but the Nazis still hold fiercely, at a time when the future victors are already making their moves for the new world order to come.
So woll’n wir uns da wieder seh’n
Bei der Laterne wollen wir steh’n
I love it when a writer, while engaging his readers in an endearing way, gets all his details right!
William Christie pushed me to investigate this or that historical detail that I, a European history buff, had never heard of. Familiar with the Oradour-sur-Glane (France) or Kalavryta (Greece) massacres, I somehow had not heard of the Fosse Ardeatines tragedy near Roma. The use of the fabled Enigma machine is also efficiently depicted and finds its way nicely into the story.
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One could argue that Alexsi is an unreal nihilistic construction, not guided by a higher sense of country, religion or money, somehow protected from the incredible emotional strain of leading a double life in a threatening environment.
Yet, like a small raft, stormed left and right by the higher waves, he floats and endures; and the reader will be grateful for that.
Wie einst Lili Marleen.
Wie einst Lili Marleen.
(“Lili Marleen” is a German love song that became popular during World War II throughout Europe among both Axis and Allied troops)
The Double Agent earns a prestigious four out of four trench coats.
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