ALSO EDITED BY OTTO PENZLER
The Big Book of Reel Murders
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A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL, NOVEMBER 2020
Copyright © 2020 by Otto Penzler
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Trade Paperback ISBN 9781984898050
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Cover design by Joe Montgomery
Cover photograph © Mark Owen/Arcangel
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ep_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0
For Morgan Entrekin
It’s been a joy and an honor to be your partner.
CONTENTS
Introduction by Otto Penzler
THE GREAT WAR
The Hairless Mexican
W. Somerset Maugham
Somewhere in France
Richard Harding Davis
Gas Attack!
Marthe McKenna
The Loathly Opposite
John Buchan
A Source of Irritation
Stacy Aumonier
A Patriot
John Galsworthy
Judith
C. E. Montague
Peiffer
A. E. W. Mason
The Donvers Case
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Georgette—A Spy
Graham Seton
Flood on the Goodwins
A. D. Divine
Under Enemy Colours
A. O. Pollard
The Aldershot Affair
Clarence Herbert New
Cunningham
W. F. Morris
Live Bait
J. M. Walsh
Uncle Hyacinth
Alfred Noyes
Alexander and the Lady
Edgar Wallace
The Popinjay Knight
Valentine Williams
The Link
Michael Annesley
WORLD WAR II
The Army of the Shadows
Eric Ambler
The Traitress
Sydney Horler
Thief Is an Ugly Word
Paul Gallico
Fraulein Judas
C. P. Donnel Jr.
The Courier
Dan Fesperman
Citadel
Stephen Hunter
OTHER TERRORS, OTHER BATTLES
Charlie’s Shell Game
Brian Garfield
Flight into Disaster
Erle Stanley Gardner
You Know What’s Going On
Olen Steinhauer
The Lady of the Great North Road
William Le Queux
Calloway’s Code
O. Henry
The Story of a Conscience
Ambrose Bierce
High Tide
John P. Marquand
A Battle of Wits
Emmuska Orczy
Adventure of the Scrap of Paper
George Barton
The Naval Treaty
Arthur Conan Doyle
The Black Doctor
T. T. Flynn
Free-Lance Spy
H. Bedford-Jones
A Tilt with the Muscovite
George Bronson-Howard
Trouble on the Border
John Ferguson
The Case of the Dixon Torpedo
Arthur Morrison
A Curious Experience
Mark Twain
Parker Adderson, Philosopher
Ambrose Bierce
The Hand of Carlos
Charles McCarry
Neighbors
Joseph Finder
THE COLD WAR
Old Soldiers
Brendan DuBois
Condor in the Stacks
James Grady
Miss Bianca
Sara Paretsky
Betrayed
Ronald G. Sercombe
For Your Eyes Only
Ian Fleming
The Red, Red Flowers
M. E. Chaber
Comrade 35
Jeffery Deaver
The Spy Who Clutched a Playing Card
Edward D. Hoch
Affair in Warsaw
Robert Rogers
The End of the String
Charles McCarry
Sleeping with My Assassin
Andrew Klavan
INTRODUCTION
ESPIONAGE HAS BEEN called the second-oldest profession, and with good reason. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, a famous textbook on waging an effective war, devoted a great deal of significance to espionage and the creation of a secret spy network. All warfare is deception, he stated, and “Be subtle! Be subtle!” he intoned, and “use your spies for every kind of business.” It was published in 510 BC.
The craft of espionage has fascinated people ever since stories were told, whether orally, on the printed page as journalism or fiction, or on a screen. The secrecy, manipulation, deception, and potential danger combine to produce an aura of romance and adventure to the enterprise.
Those who are actually involved in the world of espionage and counterespionage have quite a different view, recognizing and accepting the fact that it is mostly boring work, gathering information from technical journals, computers, overlong reports, and often self-serving memos, then analyzing the staggering mountain of information in order to filter out the tiny nuggets of data that may add a worthwhile grain of gold to a dossier that may never be used for
any serious purpose.
Of course, once espionage stories get into the hands of creative authors, much of the dull day-to-day grind is ignored and whatever color there may be in the week is highlighted and embellished. Just as characters rarely make bathroom visits in fiction or, thankfully, in motion pictures and television programs, spy novels do not dwell on the filling-out of expense vouchers, the writing of countless memos arranging tedious meetings, and the telephone calls to spouses that entail making stops at the grocery store for milk and toothpaste.
There was a time when espionage fiction was far more exciting and flamboyant than it is today, mainly because it bore no connection to reality. The many thrilling spy stories of E. Phillips Oppenheim, H. C. McNeile’s “Bulldog” Drummond adventures, John Buchan’s Richard Hannay thrillers, Baroness Orczy’s novels about the Scarlet Pimpernel, and William Le Queux’s tales were aimed at entertaining readers with the rip-roaring exploits of characters whose lives were far more enthralling than their own. Virtually all the stories were set among the wealthy and fabulous. Clandestine meetings, romantic trysts, and the surreptitious handing-over of stolen documents were done in palaces, mansions, and castles, as well as on yachts. The women in these books were all young and beautiful or old and eccentric, and the heroes were unfailingly handsome, patriotic, courageous, and honorable.
The notion of honor among spies was highly regarded and perhaps carried out to a perplexing degree in an earlier time. Its apotheosis came in the form of Henry Stimson, the newly appointed secretary of state, who shut down the Cipher Bureau because he thought it was unethical. “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail,” he stated, defining his peculiar foreign policy.
The vast majority of these espionage stories and novels were not espionage fiction at all but, rather, were counterespionage adventures. The excitement would erupt when a plot against Western countries or ruling governments by Eastern powers, anarchists, secret societies, or criminals was discovered and thwarted.
This wholly fantastical world of spy thrillers began to see the kernel of its demise when W. Somerset Maugham wrote Ashenden; or, The British Agent in 1928. This volume of connected episodes marked the birth of the realistic espionage story in which ordinary people are caught up in extraordinary circumstances and simply try their best to cope.
Buchan, Oppenheim, and others continued to write their swashbucklers for a time (and make no mistake, realistic or not, many of them were fabulously entertaining and thrilling), but the seed had been planted and the coup d’état (to mix a metaphor) occurred when Eric Ambler wrote his spy novels in the late 1930s. Largely dark and pessimistic, his primary characters were common people who preferred to do the right thing but didn’t make it their life’s calling or brag about it. When credited with helping to change the espionage novel from a romance to a realist work, Ambler gave credit to Maugham, whose work had been so influential to him. “The breakthrough was entirely Mr. Maugham’s,” he said, while noting other influences. “There is, after all, a lot of Simenon and a satisfactory quantity of W. R. Burnett, but only one Ashenden.”
The conclusion of World War I impelled a large number of British authors to write espionage stories about the Kaiser’s evil intent and the relentless fortitude and intelligence of various spy heroes to outwit him. These postwar thrillers soon morphed into predictive anti-Nazi counterespionage tales that continued to elevate the level of verisimilitude, particularly among British authors, many of whom enjoyed great success, such as Graham Greene and Henry Patterson (best-known under his Jack Higgins pseudonym).
The Cold War inspired more and more complex novels and a greater requirement for accuracy as the reading public became more sophisticated. Newspapers no longer fabricated articles extolling the bravery and brilliance of one side as it trounced the buffoons on the other. Statistics and other data were reported in magazines and newspapers, and television provided images that were irrefutable. Additionally, there was a greater willingness on the part of news media and fiction writers to accept a higher level of moral ambiguity than had existed in other wars. It was rare to find a kind, generous, and intelligent Nazi in literature, while they abounded among Soviet Communists.
Many authors, both British and American, presented the Cold War as a nuanced game played between two powers who employed the same tactics, its spies and counterspies equally ruthless but also just human beings working for their respective countries.
The greatest of these authors was John le Carré (the pseudonym of David John Moore Cornwell), whose breakout novel was The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), the dark tale that posited (and illustrated) that the British were perfectly comfortable sacrificing one of their spies. The Americans James Grady and Brian Garfield went a step further by demonstrating that it was quite all right for members of the Central Intelligence Agency to assassinate their colleagues, in Six Days of the Condor (1974) and Hopscotch (1975), respectively.
Charles McCarry, arguably the greatest American writer of espionage who ever lived, maintained a clearer vision, primarily through his series character Paul Christopher, recognizing that the West, most notably the United States, was in a just battle against totalitarianism. A deep undercover agent for the CIA for eleven years, he brought a level of accuracy and believable detail to his work that would have been impossible for any author without that background.
If a single author can be said to have bridged the era of the ultraheroic, extravagantly colorful patriot, it is Ian Fleming, whose James Bond character may have challenged Sherlock Holmes as the world’s most recognizable crime fighter. Bond’s extraordinary set of skills and attractiveness to women were never designed to appear totally realistic, which was fine with his readers and the millions who flocked to his cinematic adventures. Although Bond (like Fleming) despised the Soviet Union, his villains seldom had ideologies that transcended their thirst for massive fortunes or total world conquest—an acceptable substitute for fascism and communism.
The latest enemy of democracy in espionage stories is Islamic terrorism. Counterterrorism plays a vital role in contemporary thrillers (and in real life) as various secret service agencies are kept busy thwarting potential attacks on political leaders, military personnel, ordinary citizens, and even ancient landmarks that somehow offend the sensibilities of jihadists.
As the modern spy novel has become ultrarealistic, relying more on technology than on colorful espionage agents, one might think that the genre would be in danger of becoming tedious, bogged down with computers and other futuristically developed machinery that removes the human factor from these adventures. Fortunately, the talent and finely honed skill of most modern practitioners make this a fear to be discarded. As long as Nelson DeMille, Lee Child, Daniel Silva, Stephen Hunter, and others continue to work in the field (even if only occasionally), the future for those of us who love the battle between Good and Evil is assured.
—Otto Penzler
THE HAIRLESS MEXICAN
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
ONE OF THE MOST popular and successful authors of the twentieth century and the most highly paid author of the 1930s, William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) is still read for pleasure today, though his misanthropic work is notorious for its cruel and malicious portrayal of people. He was an important historical figure in the world of mystery and thriller fiction as his groundbreaking work, Ashenden; or, The British Agent (1928), variously called a novel (inaccurate) and a short story collection, is generally regarded as the first modern book of espionage fiction.
In Ashenden, secret agents are portrayed as ordinary people in unusual circumstances, not as dashing heroes whose lives are filled with beautiful, compliant women, secret societies, and cliff-hanging adventures.
It was Maugham’s World War I experience with British Intelligence that provided him with material for the connected stories about Richard Ashenden, a well-known author who meets a British colonel known to the Intelligence Depart
ment only as R., who asks Ashenden to work as a secret agent.
It is thought that his profession as a writer will allow him to travel freely without causing suspicion and that his knowledge of European languages will prove useful. The last advice that R. gives to Ashenden before his first assignment impresses the author: “If you do well you’ll get no thanks and if you get into trouble you’ll get no help.”
Ashenden admires goodness in others but has learned to live with evil. His interest in other people goes no further than the scientist’s feelings for experimental rabbits. They are source material for future books and he is as realistic about their bad points as he is about their good qualities. Never bored, he believes that only stupid people require external stimulation to be amused; a man of intellect can avoid boredom by using his own resources.
Ashenden, a quiet, gentlemanly figure, was to a degree based on the exceptionally shy Maugham himself, and is said to have inspired some of the characteristics of Ian Fleming’s espionage agent, James Bond—though only some, as it would be difficult to think of 007 as shy.
“The Hairless Mexican” was originally published in the December 1927 issue of Cosmopolitan; it was first collected in Ashenden; or, The British Agent (London, Heinemann, 1928).
THE HAIRLESS MEXICAN
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
“DO YOU LIKE MACARONI?” said R.
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