Edward Wilson - call The Envoy!

My first encounter with Edward Wilson's work was The Envoy, approached via Amazon's algorithm on the basis of some frenzied searching for Alan Furst equivalents. I have downloaded some stinkers as a consequence of that activity. Everybody and his cocker spaniel is writing pre- and post-World War Two nostalgiaporn now, and while the Kanons and Downings aren't bad, nobody holds much of a candle to Furst himself and of course his great inspirations, Eric Ambler and Graham Greene. Philip Kerr seems to be playing it rather cursorily and superficially these days, though the original Berlin Noir trilogy featuring Bernie Gunther was absolutely wonderful.

So,  Edward Wilson. He is pretty good, and his credentials are interesting, to say the least: US special forces in Vietnam, obscure activities in central Europe, moves to England, works as a teacher, becomes UK citizen, trade union activist and then late on, starts writing books. I imagine he knows how to kill you in about a dozen different ways. Using a pencil.

I haven't read his Vietnam novel A River in May, but The Envoy is the first of three 50s-and-60s set spy thrillers which interweave real political events and some (sometimes coyly anonymous) historical figures with the adventures of his main protagonists Fournier from the CIA, Catesby and Bone from MI6. You really need to read The Envoy first too, as its two successors (The Darkling Spy and The Midnight Swimmer) are difficult, plot-wise, without knowing all about Kit Fournier and his many troubles. It is alas, the worst of the three books too, its tricksiness too obvious, prose too lumpy and the real-life events clunkily inserted. But persevere!

There's a great deal of emotional angst, some splendidly atmospheric landscapery (mostly along the Suffolk coast) lots of detailed tradecraft and rather lip-smacking ultra-violence in all three volumes. The characters are interesting, though they can be a bit The Art of Coarse Le Carre (Catesby is the working class Lowestoft boy among MI6's Old Etonians, Bone an art-obsessed gay sailor and mountaineer). No-one here is wholly pleasant company. They're like theatrical figures you're happy to leave behind on the stage. Grotesque, unappealling, occasionally sympathetic. They all lie, all the time.

What is truly brilliant about the books, though, is the fresh take on relations between the various intelligence agencies. And the depiction of how much the Americans and the British hated and distrusted each other during the era of Burgess, McLean and Philby. There's real insight here, and a genuine sense of unease and paranoia.

And Wilson gets better and better. By the time The Darkling Spy hits Budapest in 1956, you really are gripped, you're actually there; so that the confusion about who's who and why Bone really hates The Butterfly...who's working for, err, dunno...or maybe not...stops mattering. The Midnight Swimmer is the best of the lot, though I had to keep referring back to The Envoy to work out why Kit's cousin was...oh well. Never mind.

As a series, this is genuinely worth reading. Imagine a  slightly cartoony Deighton and Le Carre, with walk-on parts for the likes of Harold Macmillan and Anthony Blunt. Grimness abounds. All the cars are terrible. And one of the great ignored spies-who-write, Charles McCarry, must be smiling sardonically. His hero Paul Christopher knows this territory inside out.