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Bentinck's Agent
Jack Turner is a draft-dodger. Anxious not to be sent to fight in Viet Nam, he has ended up in London instead. By the mid 1980s he is single, approaching middle age, with only failed careers and failed relationships behind him. Then, much to his surprise, he is headhunted by a literary agency.
His first client is Roger Bentinck – a man purporting to be a retired MI6 agent, who wants to write a memoir … a memoir Her Majesty's Government would much rather he didn't write.
Bentinck is an odd combination, part slob, part aesthete, part rebel, part patriot … a combination that makes him both attractive and repellent. But Jack is a literary agent and he has no clients. He has one task ... agent to agent, he has to get the book out of Bentinck, whatever the cost…
His first client is Roger Bentinck – a man purporting to be a retired MI6 agent, who wants to write a memoir … a memoir Her Majesty's Government would much rather he didn't write.
Bentinck is an odd combination, part slob, part aesthete, part rebel, part patriot … a combination that makes him both attractive and repellent. But Jack is a literary agent and he has no clients. He has one task ... agent to agent, he has to get the book out of Bentinck, whatever the cost…
59 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 12, 2013
25 people are currently reading
65 people want to read
About the author
John Lawton
34 books330 followersJohn Lawton is a producer/director in television who has spent much of his time interpreting the USA to the English, and occasionally vice versa. He has worked with Gore Vidal, Neil Simon, Scott Turow, Noam Chomsky, Fay Weldon, Harold Pinter and Kathy Acker. He thinks he may well be the only TV director ever to be named in a Parliamentary Bill in the British House of Lords as an offender against taste and balance. He has also been denounced from the pulpit in Mississippi as a `Communist,’ but thinks that less remarkable.
He spent most of the 90s in New York – among other things attending the writers’ sessions at The Actors’ Studio under Norman Mailer – and has visited or worked in more than half the 50 states. Since 2000 he has lived in the high, wet hills ofDerbyshire England, with frequent excursions into the high, dry hills of Arizona and Italy.
He is the author of 1963, a social and political history of the Kennedy-Macmillan years, six thrillers in the Troy series and a stand-alone novel, Sweet Sunday.
In 1995 the first Troy novel, Black Out, won the WH Smith Fresh Talent Award. In 2006 Columbia Pictures bought the fourth Troy novel Riptide. In 2007 A Little White Death was a New York Times notable.
In 2008 he was one of only half a dozen living English writers to be named in the London Daily Telegraph‘s `50 Crime Writers to Read before You Die.’ He has also edited the poetry of DH Lawrence and the stories of Joseph Conrad. He is devoted to the work of Franz Schubert, Cormac McCarthy, Art Tatum and Barbara Gowdy. (source: http://www.johnlawtonbooks.com)
He was born in 1949 in England.
He spent most of the 90s in New York – among other things attending the writers’ sessions at The Actors’ Studio under Norman Mailer – and has visited or worked in more than half the 50 states. Since 2000 he has lived in the high, wet hills ofDerbyshire England, with frequent excursions into the high, dry hills of Arizona and Italy.
He is the author of 1963, a social and political history of the Kennedy-Macmillan years, six thrillers in the Troy series and a stand-alone novel, Sweet Sunday.
In 1995 the first Troy novel, Black Out, won the WH Smith Fresh Talent Award. In 2006 Columbia Pictures bought the fourth Troy novel Riptide. In 2007 A Little White Death was a New York Times notable.
In 2008 he was one of only half a dozen living English writers to be named in the London Daily Telegraph‘s `50 Crime Writers to Read before You Die.’ He has also edited the poetry of DH Lawrence and the stories of Joseph Conrad. He is devoted to the work of Franz Schubert, Cormac McCarthy, Art Tatum and Barbara Gowdy. (source: http://www.johnlawtonbooks.com)
He was born in 1949 in England.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 17, 2018
A wonderful 62 page Kindle tale in which former British MI6 agent Roger Bentinck plans to publish a book detailing his time in post war Berlin and Vienna (think "Spycatcher" the autobiography of former MI5 officer Peter Wright, published in Australia in 1987 and you'll get the idea. Wright's book contained scandalous allegations about Britain's intelligence services and became notorious because of the British Government's failed attempts to ban it.)
Bentinck chooses a former Vietnam draft dodger working as a literary agent in London to tout his book around the city's publishing firms and that's when the problems really start. Bentinck is a delightful character - a true British patriot who invites his young literary agent to evenings at his home where he teaches him to appreciate classical music while Bentinck drinks copious amounts of whisky and eats Bird's Custard straight from the can! He's also fond of butterscotch flavoured Angel Delight, a fact which will endear him to older British fans of spy fiction.
Despite all the smiles which will be made reading this story, author John Lawton manages to get in some wonderful digs at the hypocrisy of Britain's intelligence services and the USA's failed foreign policy, pointing up how the latter betrayed many East Europeans via Radio Free Europe by urging them to rise up against their Communist overlords only to do nothing when they did.
Betrayal is the main theme of this story and it seems to be everywhere, not just in the world of spying but also among literary agents and book publishers.
Bentinck chooses a former Vietnam draft dodger working as a literary agent in London to tout his book around the city's publishing firms and that's when the problems really start. Bentinck is a delightful character - a true British patriot who invites his young literary agent to evenings at his home where he teaches him to appreciate classical music while Bentinck drinks copious amounts of whisky and eats Bird's Custard straight from the can! He's also fond of butterscotch flavoured Angel Delight, a fact which will endear him to older British fans of spy fiction.
Despite all the smiles which will be made reading this story, author John Lawton manages to get in some wonderful digs at the hypocrisy of Britain's intelligence services and the USA's failed foreign policy, pointing up how the latter betrayed many East Europeans via Radio Free Europe by urging them to rise up against their Communist overlords only to do nothing when they did.
Betrayal is the main theme of this story and it seems to be everywhere, not just in the world of spying but also among literary agents and book publishers.
August 8, 2025
I read this story quite recently, and as a result, I find myself making connections, perhaps imagined, between it and other books by John Lawton (JL).
It’s a well-crafted narrative centered around the encounters between an aging spy and a literary agent. The agent is an American who fled the U.S. years earlier to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War. He looks like an American counterpart to Joe Wilderness , also like an older version of the protagonist from Sweet Summer.
The spy seeks someone to write a book about his past exploits. The story briefly touches on his post-war adventures in Berlin in 1963, as well as covert operations in the Baltic states during the late 1950s—missions that were compromised from the outset.
The story become particularly compelling when the spy insists on naming the traitor who betrayed those missions—saying it is someone still alive. This gives the impression that the story might be hinting at the elusive "fifth man."
In a way, it feels like a tale set in the Wilderness universe—told twenty years later by someone who once lived within it.
The story is rich with fantastic dialogue, especially the exchanges between the spy and the literary agent. I particularly enjoyed the recurring line, “That was me put in my place,” which appears several times and always adds a touch of wit to the moment.
Some readers have criticized the story for ending too abruptly—particularly because it doesn’t reveal the identity of the "fifth man."
Personally, I didn’t mind this. I wasn’t reading the story for a dramatic reveal; I was reading it for the sheer pleasure of the storytelling and the dialogue—something that’s very characteristic of John Lawton’s writing.
It’s a well-crafted narrative centered around the encounters between an aging spy and a literary agent. The agent is an American who fled the U.S. years earlier to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War. He looks like an American counterpart to Joe Wilderness , also like an older version of the protagonist from Sweet Summer.
The spy seeks someone to write a book about his past exploits. The story briefly touches on his post-war adventures in Berlin in 1963, as well as covert operations in the Baltic states during the late 1950s—missions that were compromised from the outset.
The story become particularly compelling when the spy insists on naming the traitor who betrayed those missions—saying it is someone still alive. This gives the impression that the story might be hinting at the elusive "fifth man."
In a way, it feels like a tale set in the Wilderness universe—told twenty years later by someone who once lived within it.
The story is rich with fantastic dialogue, especially the exchanges between the spy and the literary agent. I particularly enjoyed the recurring line, “That was me put in my place,” which appears several times and always adds a touch of wit to the moment.
Some readers have criticized the story for ending too abruptly—particularly because it doesn’t reveal the identity of the "fifth man."
Personally, I didn’t mind this. I wasn’t reading the story for a dramatic reveal; I was reading it for the sheer pleasure of the storytelling and the dialogue—something that’s very characteristic of John Lawton’s writing.
June 23, 2022
This short fiction by John Lawton – whose most famous literary character, Inspector Frederick Troy, HATES spooks – is a grown-up portrait of an unlikely friendship developing between a thirtysomething American draft dodger turned London literary agent and a retired MI6 operative aspiring to be a rookie author telling all about “thirty-five years of espionage” (loc726). Both men are, on their surfaces, betrayers. Roger Bentinck is described as a “grotesque, upper class, right-wing English Tory” and “a fat, rude, greedy drunkard” (loc879) who is betraying the heartless errors made by the British secret service. Of his quasi-agent, Jack Turner, Bentinck believes: “the only honourable thing to do about Vietnam was dodge. To go was to betray” (loc656). Might not one expect Turner & Bentinck to remain true to each other?
June 29, 2018
Disapointing
The writing, was, of course good, but the story had no point. Felt like a book idea that he ran out of steam on, and wasn't sure what to do next. Kind of mid-LeCarre era. Too bad he was talked into publishing it
The writing, was, of course good, but the story had no point. Felt like a book idea that he ran out of steam on, and wasn't sure what to do next. Kind of mid-LeCarre era. Too bad he was talked into publishing it
January 28, 2021
Another top class short story.
Yet again one of my favourite authors pulls another short story rabbit out of a hat. Seems to cover more ground than possible in a few pages but does so in fine style.
Yet again one of my favourite authors pulls another short story rabbit out of a hat. Seems to cover more ground than possible in a few pages but does so in fine style.
September 19, 2013
Literary agents and secret agents - how could I resist this Kindle Single in the John le Carré mould? Eccentric former spy Bentinck meets the literary agent narrator with a view to publishing his memoirs and exposing shady doings high up in the secret service. Unlikely friendship ensues and Birds custard is consumed straight from the can.
November 29, 2016
I enjoyed this spies and literary agents story, which rollocked along amusingly except for the somewhat flat ending. Points also deducted for having our American protagonist know who Desperate Dan was.
November 19, 2015
enjoyed this little novella but it fizzled out a bit
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews