The Interesting Case of Anthony Price

Other Paths to Glory by Anthony Price

published 1974

 

I did a post on a spy thriller recently:

Spies in Smart Dresses about David McCloskey’s London Station.

And said that I read a lot of spy thrillers, but didn’t usually remember them.

Commenter AdrianDominic – a highly trusted blogfriend – discussed this with me and recommended Anthony Price. I had tried him years ago and didn’t get on with him at all, but AD’s views made me think I should give him another chance.

There had been another push in the right direction – this fabulous photo, which someone sent me when I was talking about Reginald Hill.

It shows Julian Symons, Eric Ambler, Reginald Hill and Anthony Price on a visit to Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin, in 1987. It was taken by the legendary Jane Bown.

My immediate reaction was that Price looked nothing like I had imagined. Here, he looks like George Smiley. I had always imagined that he would look like Ian Richardson playing Bill Haydon.

That’s because of the insufferable David Audley from the books, who would have made the ideal role for Richardson. Posh, clever, patrician, very sure of himself --- he appears, I believe, in all of the books in various roles.

Anyway: I read one as reco’ed by Adrian D, this one, and the TL:DR version is that I enjoyed it hugely, despite the infuriating Audley.

This one is about Paul Mitchell, a quiet historical researcher who is working away at his academic book when he is approached by Audley and another man, look for information on a map of First World War trenches. 

This is Mitchell’s area of expertise, so he is able to help. Then, as he is going home from his workplace, two men try to kill him, and believe they have succeeded. It then becomes apparent that the way has been prepared for him to seem to have committed suicide.

Audley re-appears to get him out of that trouble – but also to recruit him to help finding out what is going on.

There is obviously a secret to do with the British troops at the battle of the Somme, in 1916, and everyone who might know anything about it – harmless academics and ordinary people – are being killed off. What could it be and why is it so important?

Paul goes off with a group of veterans to tour the battlefields, as cover for his researches

[rather like the coach tour in this recently covered Gladys Mitchell book

Etiquette Rules for a Murderous Coach Party]

He hooks up with a glamorous French translator, and there are adventures, revelations, betrayals etc.

In some ways it is quite routine, but the background of the horrendous battles of WW1 adds a huge dimension to it: Price is obviously very very knowledgeable and you would say feels a responsibility to paint a realistic picture – in the middle of, it must be said, a not-quite-so-realistic spying plot.

This also has to be said: there is a weird carelessness about the writing, which annoyed and bothered me. Price looks and acts like someone who will be immensely precise, and he isn’t, and doesn’t seem to have been edited at all. The most egregious example is when they visit a war memorial:

the familiar Laurence Binyon lines –

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:

Not apparently that familiar, he has got them wrong. This is the actual line:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

It is quite a common mistake, but that doesn’t make it any more acceptable – it is to me always a sign of ignorance and carelessness. It is one of the most famous and repeated poems of the 20^th century and deserves to be quoted accurately. And in someone whose whole book is meant as an act of recognition to the dead, it is quite disrespectful. AIt comes just before an absolutely fascinating and heartfelt analysis of the names and implications of the war memorial.

I read and re-read the opening scene because it didn’t seem to make sense, went back to it after I’d read (and enjoyed) the whole book, and it still didn’t make any sense. There is an affectation of calling David Audley ‘the big man’, and there were moments before I realized that where I didn’t know who was speaking or acting. But the whole scene with the scrap of the map is not properly worked out: what are they after, what does Mitchell offer, none of it is ever fully explained, I thought there might be a line of dialogue missing at one point,  I even checked in another edition, but no.

On the plus side: lots of splendid 70s detail – the hovercrafts were quite the feature back then, and have now completely disappeared:

The hovercraft was fast and convenient, but it took all the atmosphere out of the Channel crossing, the spray blanking out everything but a few blurred yards of sea from which by some optical illusion there had seemed to rise wisps of steamy mist. It had reminded him of the canal, and he hadn’t liked the reminder.

I well remember crossing in them and hating them, though they were extremely fast.

A few clothes moments:

 In the Institute the day before the colonel had worn a countryman’s city suit and a look of even-tempered neutrality; now, in tweeds and deerstalker and with an expression of apoplectic anger on his face he resembled the very pattern of the Angry British Officer disguised thinly as a civilian. 

An attempt at describing a woman:

Mademoiselle MacMahon had burnished auburn hair and incredible green eyes, the greenest he had ever seen – it was those eyes which assured him that the coppery-red of the hair was genetic rather than artificial. And then the pale skin, which made the pink of the car a crime against humanity; and finally the striking green trouser suit, matching the hair and eyes … hair and eyes and skin and suit added up to a girl to take one’s breath away – the sort of girl he associated with advertisements in colour supplements … not a real girl at all.

He comments on her unusual name – McMahon. She is the descendant of irish emigres many generations ago. Or as someone once said to someone I knew, oies sauvages, the Wild Geese forced to flee.

But no one mentions that there was a President of France in the 1870s called Patrice MacMahon (extra vowel).  An unnamed Proust character reminisces in Swann's Way:  "Odette de Crécy! Why, I thought as much. Those great, sad eyes... But I say, you know, she can't be as young as she was once, eh? I remember, I had her on the day that MacMahon went." (30th Jan 1879 that would be)

I learnt a new usage:

Butler’s eyes clouded at Mitchell’s salute. ‘Belay that – no one can see us here. Where’s Audley?’

‘Belay that’ means don’t do it in Navy talk, ie 'no need to salute' in this instance.

Despite my complaints, I would definitely read more of his books.

Adrian Dominic is persuasive that I should forgive the ‘of their time’ attitudes: lack of real interest in women, conviction that the best people should be in charge, and that they will all have gone to school together, There is an honesty, a sense of principle about this book that I will look out for in his other works.

The parts of the book about the fighting in the trenches are moving and affecting. There is a lost group of men, and it started to sound like the lost Roman Legion of Britain, going into the mist…

A very suitable book for the week of Remembrance Day.

Gamekeepers and poachers feature in the book –  the subject of some blog interest earlier this year (Lady Chat Chat)

 

February 18, 1911 | This gentleman, playing with his Jack Ru… | Flickr

First day of the Somme | Catalogue reference: WO 153/167 Thi… | Flickr

British field kitchen (LOC) | Bain News Service,, publisher.… | Flickr