Answers: Geopolitical Resonance of Spy Thrillers
This quiz is inspired by the late John le Carre and the moral ambiguity that transformed his world of spies into literary gold.
1) Starting with le Carre. In his last book Agent Running in the Field (2019) which contemporary issue is the main target of his ire and is described by a character as ‘sheer bloody lunacy’?
Brexit. More here, here and here. Excerpt from Agent Running in the Field here in which the main protagonist attacks Brexit and Boris Johnson.
2) Only occasionally did Agatha Christie feature spies in her detective fiction. A notable work is the 1941 novel N or M? in which the detective couple Tommy and Tuppence Beresford unmask two German spies. The name of one of the characters, Major —————-so concerned MI5 that they launched an investigation. Why? (MI5 was relieved when Christie said she named the character after a place because her train was once stuck there for a while)
The character was Major Bletchley. Agatha Christie took the name from the town of Bletchley, which also happened to house Bletchley Park, the secret Nazi code-breaking hub of the British government. More about MI5’s investigation here.
3) This acclaimed satire on spycraft written in 1958 has the main protagonist putting together fictitious reports for his superiors in London from his overseas station. Vacuum-cleaner designs were sent to headquarters, with the spy claiming these were the government’s plans for a new and powerful weapon in a mountain hideout. But a few years later, the tale of the clandestine military installations became disturbingly real in the same country. Name the book and the author.
Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene. More here, here and here. The book was quickly made into a film scripted by Greene but by then (1959) Fidel Castro had seized power. The real-life military installations caused the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. A more sobering assessment of the Kennedy administration’s handling of the crisis here.
Graham Greene formally worked for MI6 during World War II.
4) Which real-life figure is portrayed as the U.S. President in Robert Harris' counterfactual novel Fatherland which is predicated on the Nazis winning World War II? The book begins as a murder investigation and turns into an expose of Nazi atrocities. This imagined President was in real life a U.S. Ambassador to Britain who wanted to steer clear of the Second World War and pushed an appeasement policy towards Hitler. (He even attempted to set up a meeting with Hitler and resigned after controversy over his remarks that 'Democracy is finished in England' even as Nazi Germany was bombing Britain)
Joseph Kennedy, father of John F. Kennedy. More on the Kennedy clan patriarch’s controversial tenure as ambassador to the UK here and here.
5) This trilogy was published over the course of a decade (1980, 1986 and 1990). The Venezuelan-born antagonist who dies in the final book is named after a real-life figure who is still alive. The real-life figure was captured in 1994 and jailed for life. Name the book series, the author and the real-life figure.
Robert Ludlum and the Bourne series (The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum). The antagonist is Carlos the Jackal, notorious for a series of attacks in the 1970s. He was captured by French agents in Sudan in 1994 and sentenced to life in France.
6) American Spy, Lauren Wilkinson’s debut novel published in 2019 features a Black woman protagonist whose efforts to rise through the FBI ranks are thwarted. She is recruited by the CIA to cosy up to a leftist African leader the agency wants to overthrow. The popular socialist leader known as Africa’s Che Guevara is a real-life figure who was assassinated in 1987. Who and which country?
Thomas Sankara, who among other things changed his country’s name from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso (Land of Upright Men). More about Sankara here, here , here, here and here. More about Lauren Wilkinson’s book here.
7) Which renowned conservative ideologue in the U.S. responded to portrayals of moral ambiguity in the CIA (the immediate trigger being the Robert Redford film ‘Three Days of the Condor’) by launching his own fictional CIA operative, Blackford Oakes, who was unambiguously on the right side? Starting with ‘Saving the Queen’ in 1976, he wrote 11 spy thrillers featuring Oakes, all set in the Cold War era.
William F. Buckley Jr., American conservative intellectual and founding editor of the National Review magazine. More here and here. Buckley’s scathing criticism of Three Days of the Condor here. More on Blackford Oakes here and here.
8) A crucial figure in the British government’s war propaganda bureau, this author wrote a bestseller in 1915 in which a German spy ring is busted. Alfred Hitchcock made the thriller into a film in 1935. The author was later a Conservative MP and Governor General of Canada. Name the author and book
John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps
9) Stella Rimington has written a series of spy thrillers featuring MI5 officer Liz Carlyle starting with At Risk (2004). How was she a pioneering figure in professional life before turning to writing spy fiction?
Stella Rimington was the first female head of MI5
10) This already successful author was sent to Switzerland during World War I by British intelligence under the guise of completing a play. He spent some time in Russia as well just before the Bolshevik takeover in 1917. In 1928 he released a book of short stories drawing on his experiences as a spy. The book was an unusually realistic portrayal at the time with the main character complaining his life is "as orderly and monotonous as a city clerk's". John le Carre was an admirer and called the author “the first person to write about espionage in a mood of disenchantment and almost prosaic reality”. Name the book/character and the author.
11) In 2006 this author admitted he had helped finance a failed coup attempt in a West African county back in 1972. In 1974 he wrote a bestselling book with echoes of the failed coup. But in fiction the president of an imagined West African state is ousted by a group of mercenaries. Name the author, the 1974 book and the country he modelled the book on. (Hint: another coup attempt was foiled in 2004)
Frederick Forsyth, The Dogs of War. The fictional African country of Zangaro is modelled on Equatorial Guinea. In 1978 Forsyth was accused of organising a failed coup effort in Equatorial Guinea earlier in 1972. In 2006 he admitted to financing mercenaries behind the coup bid. The revelations followed another failed coup attempt (not involving Forsyth) in Equatorial Guinea.
12) Name the American ornithologist who wrote the book Birds of the West Indies. Hint: a former intelligence officer who lived in Jamaica and had the book in his collection liked the ornithologist’s name and put it to literary use.
James Bond. More about Bond the ornithologist here and here. The former intelligence officer who had an estate in Jamaica known as Goldeneye is Ian Fleming.