Material Witness

REVIEW: The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming

Spying, even fictional spookery, is not all first class international travel, Inspector Gadget themed weapons and vodka martinis. Devotees of John Le Carré will know that, of course, but in case anyone needs further proof I present the excellent novels of Charles Cumming.  

I picked up my first Cumming novel a year ago on the recommendation of a friend and as 2016  closes (good riddance) I'm just starting my seventh. I've loved all six so far - the three Thomas Kell books, the two featuring Alec Milius and now this standalone novel, The Trinity Six.

The five Cambridge spies - Burgess, Blunt, Philby, Maclean and Cairncross - who passed post-War secrets to the Soviets have been a mine of material for writers of fiction and non-fiction alike. One of the core themes in this has been the pursuit of other potential traitors cut from the same cloth. And this, as the title suggests, is the premise of Cumming's  extravagantly entertaining 2011 novel. 

The latest on the trail of the mythical sixth spy is Sam Gaddis, a down-on-his-luck professor at UCL's School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies. Gaddis, with school fees and the tax man to pay, needs to find a marketable book to sell. An idea arrives in the form of his journalist friend Charlotte Berg, who is on the trail of the sixth man and believes she might have found him in the form of one Edward Crane.

When Berg is found dead in her home, Gaddis soldiers on solo, quickly to discover that anyone wondering near the story of Crane has a habit of doing so. Nobody it seems wants the story to be told, including the secret services of both Russia and the UK.   

The Trinity Six is fascinating on many levels. Cumming, who was reportedly approached to work for MI6, always delivers interesting insights into the workings of modern security services, portraying working life there as a mixture of mundane routine ('spying is waiting', Kell is fond of saying, quoting John Le Carré) and explosive excitement, with the former dominant.  Cumming also explores the moral complexity of the trade, with Kell and the freelance Milius in particular spending a lot of time in the grey between what might be the patriotic and professional thing to do, and what might be the right thing to do. Gaddis, no more than an enthusiastic amateur, strays into some of this territory but is often too busy either recklessly trying to get himself killed, or trying to survive his own recklessness. 

As the quest for the sixth spy turns to the more famous five for clues, there are also interesting history lessons around the post-War surge of support for communism within the academic elite that created such a ripe environment for Soviet headhunters.

Equally, at the heart of this novel, is a ruthless critique of modern Russia, fictionally run by one Sergei Platov, a thinly disguised (we're talking fag-paper-thin here) Vladimir Putin. 

Finally, The Trinity Six is just a great thriller with everything you'd want from that. A great narrative runs at a grace pace with enjoyable characters and terrific writing. And I could say the same for all six of Cummings novels I've read. 

If espionage is your thing, you'll love The Trinity Six. And if it's not, try it anyway. 

REVIEW: Rather Be The Devil by Ian Rankin

You cannot keep a good man down. This applies both to the evergreen Ian Rankin and to John Rebus, who refuses to let a minor thing like retirement deter him from chasing down the mad and the bad of the Edinburgh underworld. 

Here is Rebus in his 21st outing, slower of step and shorn of his warrant card, but energised by another encounter with his nemesis Big Ger Cafferty and perhaps a last best chance to put the old gangster away.

The opportunity arises when Rebus busies himself with an unofficial investigation into the unsolved death of a young woman in an Edinburgh hotel decades earlier. The cold case file leads him to interview another retired copper, now a night club doorman, who had previously looked into the crime. When  his interviewee turns up dead Rebus finds himself embroiled in a tangled web of a case that eventually ensnares Edinburgh financiers, a rock band and crime gangs at both ends of the M8.    

Rebus is also ensnared in the continuing ménage-a-trois between himself, Malcolm Fox and his long-suffering sidekick Siobhan Clark. It's the dynamic between these three that has driven recent books in the series, and been responsible for how entertaining they have been. Fox and Clark have a will-they-won't-they thing going on, a source of amusement to Rebus. That relationship has been dealt a severe blow by Fox's reassignment to Police Scotland's major crime squad, a role they both know she is better suited to. Meanwhile Clark's evolution from Rebus' apprentice to her role as 'in loco parentis' (rightly figuring out that if he won't look after himself, someone will have to) continues. And then there is Rebus and Fox, the latter of whom during his time in Complaints, tried to put the former away. Here, Rebus is now back in the teacher role, pushing Fox out of the comfort zone of his by-the-rules straight jacket. 

Rankin, as ever, delivers a fascinating plot, but it is the interaction between these three - and to a lesser extent between Rebus and Cafferty - that provides the fizz in a hugely enjoyable and entertaining novel. And happily, the way Rankin leaves the story, there's more to come. 

REVIEW: The Crown on Netflix

The triumph of The Crown, the Netflix dramatisation of the British Royal Family following the current Queen's ascent to the throne in 1952, is that it does so much with so little.

At its heart The Crown is the story of a young woman coming to terms with her new job and a young family with its new circumstances, albeit that those circumstances are of course somewhat extraordinary. Nothing much of anything happens. But writer Peter Morgan squeezes every last drop of drama and pathos out of what was likely lived as a fairly slow sequence of events. After the death of her father and her rise to power, three stories dominate the 10 episodes - the health of Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his battle to hold on to power; the doomed love affair of Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend, equerry to the late George VI; and the growing realisation of the young Queen that her life is no longer her own, that her every decision is now subjugated to whatever is best for the Crown. 

The result is a fascinating, often moving and entirely believable (even if exaggerated) drama that held us spellbound over its 10 hours. Even as the Queen becomes more Royal, more cold and calculating under the tutelage of her mother and a succession of politicians and private secretaries, she becomes more human. Her overwhelming loneliness and isolation, the essential sacrifices she made for her role, are strangely surprising. Claire Foy brings the young Elizabeth to life beautifully, mastering the uncertainty and vulnerability of the early episodes, then later the inner conflict and her growing confidence and assertiveness. BAFTAs and other awards surely reckon. 

Foy is surrounded by a glittering supporting cast of royals and courtiers. Jared Harris is suitably understated as George VI, a shy man thrust into an unwelcome limelight, while Victoria Hamilton is spiky and  challenging as his widow, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The late Queen Mother, regarded with reverence, might be one of the few royals to come out of the show with her reputation dented. Hamilton plays her as a tough almost unpleasant figure, the stolid defender of the royal realm. Alex Jennings is typically superb as the Duke of Windsor, wearing his forced exile with a self-centred sense of injury and injustice, illuminated by the occasional blinding flash of insight and inspiration. His commentary on his niece's coronation from a Paris society party was one of the cleverest pieces of writing in a series that was exquisitely scripted. (Morgan truly is the star of this show). 

And then there's Phil the Greek, the Duke of Edinburgh played by Matt Smith. The Duke has rarely been one to elicit a lot of sympathy from his wife's subjects with his air of superiority and a history of rudeness and gaffes.  But here Morgan reveals the great difficulty of his position, married into a life that has stripped him of his freedom, his career and even his name - his masculinity if you like.

Matt Smith plays him as a restless cad, gadding about with his friends and coming in drunk at all hours while his tortured wife worries her way through another constitutional crisis. It's a strange performance, dominated by a coquettish-knowing-smirk-cum-smile delivered from underneath blonde locks. But just as the Queen Mother comes out as a much less sympathetic figure than the royal saint of tabloid yore, with Phillip the reverse was true. You genuinely wouldn't want his half life. 

Also living a half life, in the shadow of her sister is the most radiant of The Crown's jewels, the lovelorn Margaret, played by the iridescent Vanessa Kirby. Margaret begins the series as a carefree party girl  with an effortless cool, finishes it in the sloughs of despair. But Kirby, beautiful and elegant, shines regardless. We are going to see a lot more of her.  

And then there is John Lithgow  as Churchill, struggling with mortality. I never quite came to terms with Lithgow's face, but his movement, demeanour and speech captured the final age of Winston Churchill quite brilliantly and emotionally.

Naturally the whole thing - Netflix's most expensive original series - looked utterly magnificent. The 1950s may have been an austere decade of renewal and rationing, but it didn't much look like that in the Royal planes, trains, boats, automobiles and palaces. Costume and set design was absolutely spot on.

I've no idea what Netflix's plans are for The Crown, but if they come back for more, I'm with them.