A Secret Understanding

by Merle Miller

A brilliant novel of a reluctant modern spy.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1956

About the author

Merle Miller, born in Montour, Iowa, wrote almost a dozen books, including more than half a dozen novels. His first, ''That Winter'' (1948), was considered one of the best novels about the postwar readjustment of World War II veterans. His other novels included ''A Day in Late September,'' set in suburban Connecticut on a Sunday in September 1960, ''The Sure Thing,'' ''Reunion,'' and his masterwork, the monumental "A Gay and Melancholy Sound" (1960).

Oral biographies accounted for his greatest success. The first of them, ''Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman,'' was published in 1974. It was adapted from an abortive television series for which the former President spent many hours in the early 1960's talking with Miller, the researcher and writer for the project.

His Johnson biography, a book for which he conducted 180 interviews and consulted almost 400 oral histories, was a best seller in 1980. Although he said he began the biography disliking the former President, in part because Miller was an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, he ended up appreciating Mr. Johnson's parliamentary achievements and calling him ''one of the most complex, fascinating Presidents of all time.''

In 1971, Miller wrote a widely discussed essay for The New York Times Magazine, ''What It Means to Be a Homosexual,'' which, he said, brought him more than 2,000 letters, many of them from other homosexuals thanking him for helping to restore their self-respect. This article, and the enlarged book published from it, "On Being Different," made Miller the first nationally-known advocate for gay rights. He closely followed that famous essay with the novel "What Happened," fictionalizing some of his own horrific life experiences which lay behind the NYT essay.

Miller attended the University of Iowa and spent a year at the London School of Economics. He joined the Army Air Corps in 1942 and served as an editor of Yank magazine, in both the Pacific and in Europe, until his discharge in September 1945. He worked briefly as an editor at Time and Harper's magazines.

Reviews

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I stumbled on this book Nero Wolfe was reading in Might as Well Be Dead, little did I know there is an extensive Nero Wolfe reading list the Wolfe Pack has put together: http://www.nerowolfe.org/htm/tidbits/... !! Of course I had to laugh when the hero and his wife are reading a Nero Wolfe paperback. This is a really good read! And it makes sense Nero Wolfe enjoyed reading it, for it unfolds among people who have to be found and talked to, it unfolds slowly and is a piecemeal thing--having to do with World War II spy-counterspy and the aftershocks of this on real people --Ward Matthews and his wife Marcia are people I would love to have lunch with! Putting together the piece is what Matthews does, just like Wolfe does, and sometimes I felt the style of the two mysteries were pretty close. I learned even more about the spying business with Germany, and just learned a lot about people and detection. Now I want to read all the books on Nero Wolfe's list--if they are half as good as this one!

[Mike Zickar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sharp witty writing, insightful and witty like James Cain