Intrigue: Espionage and Culture Review

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(More customer reviews)In "Intrigue: Espionage and Culture," Allen Hepburn explores the connotative range of recurrent narrative motifs in twentieth-century spy fiction. After developing a "theory of intrigue," he focuses his investigations on John Le Carré's "A Perfect Spy," Graham Greene's "Third Man," and John Banville's "The Untouchable," among other novels of espionage. Hepburn's analysis of Banville's Victor Maskell, whose character is based in part on art historian and Soviet spy Anthony Blunt, is particularly insightful. One would like to see Professor Hepburn extend his inquiry to the many representations of actual spies such as Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, et al. It would be interesting to see how many of his identified stereotypes recur in espionage accounts that purport to be factual. Such an analysis would serve to enlighten the historian who is trying to distinguish fact from fiction while exploring the so-called "wilderness of mirrors."
Although the book is scholarly, Hepburn's straightforward prose makes fascinating reading for anyone addicted to the topic of espionage.

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Why do spies have such cachet in the twentieth century? Why do they keep reinventing themselves? What do they mean in a political process? This book examines the tradition of the spy narrative from its inception in the late nineteenth century through the present day. Ranging from John le Carré's bestsellers to Elizabeth Bowen's novels, from James Bond to John Banville's contemporary narratives, Allan Hepburn sets the historical contexts of these fictions: the Cambridge spy ring; the Profumo Affair; the witch-hunts against gay men in the civil service and diplomatic corps in the 1950s.Instead of focusing on the formulaic nature of the genre, Intrigue emphasizes the responsiveness of spy stories to particular historical contingencies. Hepburn begins by offering a systematic theory of the conventions and attractions of espionage fiction and then examines the British and Irish tradition of spy novels. A final section considers the particular form that American spy narratives have taken as they have cross-fertilized with the tradition of American romance in works such as Joan Didion's Democracy and John Barth's Sabbatical.

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