The Scholars of Night

by John M. Ford

Nicholas Hansard is a brilliant historical analyst, a genius at extracting the truth from forgotten documents. A professor at a small New England college, Hansard has a second, secret career with The White Group, a "consulting agency" with shadowy Washington connections.

When Hansard's work exposes one of his closest friends, Allan Berenson, as a Soviet agent, and Berenson dies mysteriously, the connections seem all too clear. Shaken, Hansard turns away from secrets to investigate a manuscript that may be a lost play from Christopher Marlowe. Surely, he thinks, four hundred years is a safe distance from the events of the present.

He is wrong.

Allan Berenson's murder has set in motion a deadly chain reaction, as spies run for cover, traitors hide their tracks, and assassins stalk their victims. Berenson's lover--herself an unsuspected spy--seeks revenge by completing Berenson's final project: the theft of the West's most crucial military secret. Its use will forever change the balance of power in Europe.

But the key to completing the plan is hidden in the Marlowe manuscript... and only Nicholas Mansard can find it.

Pursued and manipulated by all sides, Hansard is caught in a crossfire where no loyalty, identity or motive is what it appears, and a name from the time of Elizabeth I will bring the world to the brink of war.

The Scholars of Night is an extraordinary novel of technological espionage and human betrayal, weaving past and present into a web of unbearable suspense.

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Espionage, Historical Fiction, Science Fiction, 20th Century

288 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1988

About the author

John Milo "Mike" Ford was a science fiction and fantasy writer, game designer and poet.

Ford was regarded (and obituaries, tributes and memories describe him) as an extraordinarily intelligent, erudite and witty man. He was a popular contributor to several online discussions. He composed poems, often improvised, in both complicated forms and blank verse, notably Shakespearean pastiche; he also wrote pastiches and parodies of many other authors and styles.At Minicon and other science fiction conventions he would perform "Ask Dr. Mike", giving humorous answers to scientific and other questions in a lab coat before a whiteboard.

Ford passed away from natural causes in 2006 at his home in Minneapolis.

Biography source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._...

Reviews

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sort of a Cold War spy thriller (published in 1988, when the Cold War was still a thing) in which an academic who participates in games of Diplomacy and occasionally does "consulting" work on the side finds himself sent to England to investigate and attempt to verify a recently-discovered "lost" play by Christopher Marlowe, and finds himself a catspaw between multiple competing factions on all sides (or no sides); and maybe the play was fictionalizing or memorializing real events, and maybe those events 400 years ago have some bearing on what's happening now?

Gracefully written and oblique and compelling, and it's a damned shame that, in all likelihood, this, and the rest of John M. Ford's work, will never be reprinted. Authors! Always make sure you have a will that specifies who gets control of your literary legacy after your passing!

UPDATE: It looks like this story will actually have a happy ending -- word is just now breaking that Ford's work will be coming back into print starting in 2020.

[Lata · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve never read anything by this author before, so I was eager to check out this book, especially after reading the glowing preface by Charles Stross.

I remember growing up with the constant threat of nuclear war. So reading an John M. Ford espionage story set in the 1980s was an interesting step back to this time, with its references to WWII, and its Cold War fears and the suited, faceless people working together and against the other side, and the agents and double agents in the field.
Ford also included war games, and playwright Christopher Marlowe in this story, alluding to the man’s espionage work for the Crown, as well as one of his plays. All these details are skillfully woven into this 80s story, which kicks off with a Russian agent’s death, with the play functioning as both a motive and a guide to the agent’s complex plan.
The main character, Nicholas Hansard, an unwitting protégé of the murdered agent, is sent afterwards to authenticate an unearthed Marlowe play, with another, deadly Russian agent taking revenge on others, while putting the detailed plan in motion.

The story started off well, and had me engaged. Then a third of the way in, my interest began waning. I really think that much of the spy wrangling bogged down the action, which is weird, considering this story is about spies running around and finding things out, while their handlers handle situations and budgets and things. Also, Nicholas Hansard was a bit of a snooze as a character. Every time the action centred on WAGNER moving ever closer to her end goal, I was engaged. Then Nicholas would reappear, or spies in other parts of the world would be doing something, and my attention would wander. I read the whole book through, and what does it say that I wanted WAGNER to succeed?

So, I was kind of disappointed that I didn’t enjoy this more.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Macmillan-Tor/Forge for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Nigel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still unwell. Ugh. John M Ford, man-about-literature, wrote a spy novel, and it is a clever, elliptical tale of game-playing and historical secrets and a plot that, quite properly, reveals a contempt and hate and fear of the world that gives us spy novels. Ford can be downright obscure in his writing, but I thought it all worked to his advantage here in the murky world of secrets and betrayals and double meanings and triple agents. I do now wish he'd written a novel about Christopher Marlowe. The brief historical bits made me want to go reread The Dragon Waiting (or Waldrop's Heart of Whitenesse.)

[Rachel Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

A clever (perhaps too clever for its own good), twisty (ditto) post-Cold War thriller by the late, great John Ford. I think this is his only non-sff novel, though it is arguably alternate history and possibly sf of the techno-thriller variety.

It juggles a lot of complex puzzle pieces, action set-pieces, and short, sharp character sketches into a whirlwind of a story concerning double agents, a newly discovered play which may be by Christopher Marlowe or may be a clever hoax, secret codes, war games, theatre, academia, the complications of love, spies in Elizabethan times, spies in Cold War times, and spies in the 1980s.

I had read this before, and recalled enjoying it but not having a clue what was going on, and I forgot the plot immediately upon finishing it. I finished my re-read fifteen minutes ago; I enjoyed it, but I still don't understand much of what happened or why. I can follow the general outlines of people running around, shooting at and betraying each other, and unraveling complex codes and schemes, but neither the details of how they're doing it or the overall reasons why, let alone who's really on which side.

Ford was undoubtedly much smarter than me (I am pretty sure he was much smarter than nearly everyone) and I don't expect to understand all the details and allusions and subtext, or even a lot of the plot, the first time I read any of his books.

But this book depends more on plot than most of his; the characters exist to serve the plot rather than the other way around. It's set up as a mystery, but I didn't understand about two-thirds of the solution.

It's well-written but too subtle to quite work as a mystery/thriller. On the other hand, without Ford's usual depth of character and allusion, it feels a bit lightweight. It's definitely worth reading if you're a Ford completist, and is way more easily obtainable than it used to be, with cheap used paperback copies on Amazon. But it's a distinctly minor work.

Just a few of the many things I didn't understand:

What did the Russians have to do with it all? Was Berenson a Russian agent?

What was the relevance of the body found in the jeep at the beginning?

Was Berenson and Maxwell's plan actually to prove that the communication system wouldn't prevent a nuclear strike... by launching a nuke? And then what? Or was it a fake nuke? And since their unauthorized missile wouldn't be using a government communication system either, what in the world would launching it prove? Or was their plan something else?

I don't understand why the plan fell through. Was it really just that Maxwell didn't expect Hansard to tell anyone she had been (supposedly) kidnapped? Why did she tell Hansard where she worked?

Why was a duplicate copy of the Skene manuscript left with amusing alterations at Berenson's apartment?

Why would the mastermind professor, Ellen's father, go through all that rigamarole to get his hands on the Skene manuscript, when Hansard was able to walk on in and study it? Shouldn't Ellen's father have been able to get the same access? Or did he want the physical manuscript itself?

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read thanks to NetGalley.

Well that was a completely bonkers read.

When I first asked to review this, I didn't realise it was a reprinting; I'm not enough of a Ford fan to know that he's passed on. Then I read Charles Stross' introduction, in which he talks about this being published in 1988 and setting out the political context for the younger audience, and I wondered what this was going to be like.

Completely bonkers, is the answer.

It's a spy novel,
It has a possibly-undiscovered Christopher Marlowe play.
It has scholars and spies and disaffected patriots and mercenaries and... just a most remarkable cast, and a complicated narrative that eventually makes sense, and PhDs playing Diplomacy and people making Marlowe jokes and war game simulations and BONKERS.

It's awesome. The only downside is that some bits (eg who knew who was who) got a bit complicated so reading it over a few days, I wasn't always sure of exactly what was known to various people. But it all came good in the end. Basically.

Huge fun.

[Lawrence · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this is probably a very good Cold War spy novel from the 80s, and I think that is probably not a genre I like very much. All of the bits about historical research on Early Modern plays hung together well enough for me to think the whole thing must be clever and thorough, but even though I understand WHAT everybody did, I still don’t really get WHY they did most of it. I think I spent the whole book rooting for the bad guys by mistake, and I can’t tell if I was supposed to actually disapprove of them at the end. So my favourite part was really the “historical fiction” aspect of seeing how the novel explains and tries to predict computers. (Also the fashions.) I’d read more from this author, but not this genre.

[Gintautas Ivanickas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rašytojas, kurį Neil Gaiman yra pavadinęs „geriausiu iš man žinomų“. Ir tuo pat metu praktiškai likęs kažkur užribiuose. Ne, jis turėjo savo šlovės laiką, maždaug 1990-2000 metais. Bet po to lėtai grimzdo į užmarštį.
Po Fordo mirties 2006 metais beveik visi jo kūriniai buvo nebespausdinami. Teisės į jo kūrinius atiteko teisėtiems paveldėtojams, tačiau niekam nepavyko su jais susisiekti. Po žurnalisto Isaac Butler atlikto tyrimo leidyklos „Tor Books“ redaktoriams pavyko atkurti ryšį su jo šeima ir 2019 m. lapkritį buvo pasiektas susitarimas dėl visų jo išleistų kūrinių pakartotinio leidimo, pradedant 2020 m. knyga „The Dragon Waiting“. Taip prasidėjo savotiškas Fordo renesansas.
Savo pavėluotą pažintį su Fordu ir pradėjau nuo to „Drakono“. Keistokas, nelabai į kažką panašus stilius, netolygus, kažkoks trukčiojantis ritmas. Bet negaliu skųstis, kad buvo neįdomu. O dabar štai į rankas pateko bene vienintelis ne fantastinis Fordo stambus kūrinys – šnipų trileris. Ir bėdos tos pačios – vėl ritmas, vėl trukčiojimas, vėl labai daug kas puse lūpų. Vėl didesnę knygos dalį nė velnio neaišku, kas vyksta. Ir vėl įdomu.
Nicholas Hansard – puikus istorikas, kurio specializacija – XVI amžiaus britų dramaturgas Christopher Marlow. Tačiau Hansardas turi ir antrą, slaptą karjerą „konsultacinėje agentūroje“, slaptoje vyriausybinėje organizacijoje.
Kai paaiškėja, kad vienas iš jo artimiausių draugų yra rusų agentas, o vėliau tas draugas paslaptingai miršta, sukrėstas Hansardas nusigręžia nuo savo slapto darbo ir kaip atsisveikinimo užduotį imasi nustatyti neseniai atrasto Marlow rankraščio autentiškumą. Atrodytų, tokia užduotis tikrai neturi nieko bendra su jam tapusiais atgrasiais šnipų žaidimais. Oi, kaip jis klysta.
Trys iš penkių. Bet labai tvirti trys.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have very mixed feelings on this - parts of it, I will admit, just didn't make sense to me. I had a hard time believing that it was necessary in spy craft to have someone who can find secrets in old documents - that this was an IMPORTANT craft. In this book, the works of Christopher Marlow are used to find out whose a traitor and to disclose a plot... the works of Marlow are relevant in this particular instance....I guess. At the end of the book our guy Hansard is tasked to look at a map of Bavaria from the 30 years war - and I just felt that it's incredulous that once again an old document can matter AGAIN. Also, while I am willing to accept that Hansard (our Historian) and a few others (those plotting) might be familiar with the works of Marlow - I will not except that everyone else is. Spy stories are always over the top - but I just felt that this one wasn't grounded in enough reality to work.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very elegantly expressed thriller.

[Marlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published at Reading Reality

The Scholars of Night is a book that lives at multiple crossroads. Or perhaps that should be multiple turning points. The world was changing under pretty much all of the axes at which this book is written, and it was obvious to those in the story – as well as those with eyes to see in the real world – that the verities which they lived under were about to change dramatically even if no one knew at the time what the results would be.

When The Scholars of Night was written, and when it was originally published, the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which had been at various temperatures between below 0 Fahrenheit and barely above 0 centigrade since the end of World War II, was about to end. Not that it was actually thawing, more that one of the sides was about to undergo a seismic shift that would change the nature of the game entirely.

And it was a game, as the players involved in this story make very clear. It’s just that it was a game with very real and deadly stakes.

The other factor, that other crossroads, and one as it turned out with equally deadly consequences, was the continuing miniaturization and coming ubiquity of omnipresent and seemingly omniscient information technology. Personal computers had started their shift from hobbyist tinker toys to working business devices with the production of the IBM PC in 1981, while the shift of the U.S. Department of Defense’ ARPANET into the internet we know today was already well on its way.

The intellectual games of espionage and their deadly consequences were shifting from the domain of people who were good at solving puzzles to people who programmed computers to make decisions at the speed of light.

That gamesmaster, academic and occasional intelligence asset Allan Berenson is slated for death by one of those speed of light decisions, and that his protege Nicholas Hansard and Berenson’s lover, the agent known only as WAGNER, do their best and worst to carry out Berenson’s last plan through a combination of intelligent puzzle-solving, ruthless determination and willful blindness to its consequences is a perfect metaphor for the death and the life of one old Cold warrior and the world he knew entirely too well.

Escape Rating A: The story in The Scholars of Night is complex and convoluted and wonderful. No one trusts anyone else, no one is really on anyone else’s side, everyone is waiting for everyone else to betray them – with good reasons – and everyone is unreliable because no one is telling the truth about anything even when they think they know the truth.

Which they usually don’t. This is a story about lies and the lying liars who tell those lies to the point where no one really knows what the truth is anymore or whether the truth even exists. So the truth becomes a fungible commodity, and the lines between collateral damage and just damage are so blurred they don’t even exist any longer.

The way that the story echoes back and around to Christopher Marlowe, his work for Elizabeth I’s spymasters, and the dirty deeds that he participated in and covered up just makes the point with even more emphasis that espionage is always a dirty business. No one involved is on the side of the angels.

(In a peculiar way, The Scholars of Night is a bit of a readalike for A Tip for the Hangman, which covers Marlowe’s forays into spycraft more directly. At any rate, if you like this you’ll probably like that, and there’s enough of Marlowe in the background here to make it very much vice versa.)

The story of The Scholars of Night is not a straightforward one by any means. WAGNER compartmentalizes her plan to enact Berenson’s last play so very well that the right hand and the left hand never even seem to be in the same country or on the same playing field and the reader spends as much of the story trying to piece the clues together as the agent does. Certainly the agencies following her are always at least one step behind, and we often feel that we are, too.

On the one hand, this story feels historical. 1986 or thereabouts are a lifetime ago. So in some ways, the story feels prescient as Berenson’s last big play foreshadows both the end of the Cold War and the rise of intelligent machines controlling the world instead of intelligent people. And yet, the story was contemporaneous at the time it was written.

And excellently well done at that. Especially if you like puzzles as much as Berenson and WAGNER did.

[Lis Carey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a Cold War spy thriller, published in 1988, when the Cold War was still on and fear of nuclear annihilation still felt very, very imminent. Ford was a great writer, and this book gives the lie to the defense for the sexism and other attitudes we are often urged not to criticize in older works "He was of his time." Ford's female characters have to deal with the sexism and misogyny of the time, but they themselves are strong, intelligent, independent, and not treated by Ford as if they deserve the attitudes they have to struggle against.

Nicholas Hansard is a young professor of history at a small college, who also has a tiny toehold in the world of espionage--though he's not entirely aware of it. He just does some research and document authentication for The White Group, and has no real idea what The White Group really is.

The really important thing he doesn't know, though, is that his mentor, Allan Berenson, is a spy, theoretically part of the US intelligence world, but in reality working for the Russians. When Berenson dies, apparently of a heart attack but in fact a carefully staged elimination of the double agent, things start spinning out of control, not just in Hansard's life, but, especially there.

He nearly quits his enjoyable little side job with The White Group, having realized by events surrounding Berenson's death that something is very odd, but is persuaded to at least delay that resignation with the bait of a newly discovered play purportedly by Christopher Marlowe--who was himself a spy employed by Elizabeth I's spymaster, Francis Walsingham. He's given a copy, and sent to England to do the research necessary to determine if it's real.

Once there, he meets a woman named Ellen Maxwell at the British Library, who is also there apparently doing research.

Meanwhile, we are seeing other parts of the story from other viewpoints, including at a military wargaming center in Britain, a joint NATO operation testing new equipment and plans. We also see high-level Soviet (and more than thirty years later, I initially typed "Russian," because the world has changed) operatives in Britain, and the woman who was the number two in Berenson's ring, still working to carry out his plan, which includes a nuclear strike.

All the different threads and players are intertwined in the story, and we can't always be sure who is really working for who. We don't, above all, know who Berenson's loyal and determined number two, going by code name WAGNER, really is, though there's more than one candidate, as well as the possibility that she's someone else.

This is a subtle intricate, and satisfying Cold War spy thriller, with a greater awareness of the distance between social rules and reality than most (not all) of Ford's contemporaries in the field.

Ford died in 2006, and due to lack of a will and a literary executor, and misunderstandings, his work has been out of print ever since. It's a joy to have this book available again after so many years, with the rest of Ford's work scheduled to be published over the next few years. Fair warning: This is his only book that isn't science fiction or fantasy, and this one is, arguably, alternate history, or secret history. The first to come back into print, last year, was The Dragon Waiting, is an alternate history historical fantasy.

Highly recommended, and I mean that not just for this book, but for all of them, as they become available again.

I bought this book

[Peter Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Scholars of Night by John M. Ford

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...

If I were more of an aficionado of the spy genre, I would probably have given this four stars. There seemed to be some improbable plot developments, but, on the whole, in most spy action stories, these kinds of improbabilities occur.

I really liked this story despite these improbabilities (and despite a plot twist that could be spotted miles away from the reveal.) Undoubtedly I found the main character a Diplomacy-playing history professor to be empathetic, probably because in law school, I played Diplomacy and I was a history major in college.

The story's protagonist is Nicholas Hansard. Hansard is a history professor who moonlights as a consultant for a mysterious intelligence service named the "White Group." In the course of one investigation, he unmasks his beloved mentor as a Soviet agent.

It is important to keep in mind that this book was written in 1988. At that time, the Cold War was going strong and the Soviet Union was still in business. The story communicates the sensibilities of a time now lost to history.

Hansard is talked into doing another job for the White Group, namely verifying the provenance of a newly-discovered play by Christopher Marlow. In the course of this job, Hansard stumbles into a parallel mystery involving a plot to trigger World War III by stealing a piece of Cold War high technology.

I enjoyed the historical angle and watching Hansard go through his intellectual paces as he attempts to figure out the Marlow mystery. He is almost brought into the modern spy mystery by accident and the final part of the book seems more James Bond than George Smiley. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the story throughout the whole thing.

[Billy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A vintage Cold War spy novel by John M. Ford! How could I resist?

The Scholars of Night definitely fits the bill for twisty classic spy novels, but its much more than that. Intertwined with protagonist Dr. Nicholas Hansard's story of authenticating a supposedly lost Christopher Marlowe play is a constantly shifting tale of spies and double crosses as a rogue operative tries to pass on classified military hardware and turn a wargame into the real thing. It left me guessing, though a lot of that was due to rapidly shifting names and viewpoints throughout the novel. It may frustrate a reader slightly, but it's well worth following the trail. I only wish I had been able to read it sooner, so I could include it in my library's Best of 2021 list.

[Angus McKeogh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just barely makes the cut for an average read. It seemed like the beginning was just various spies running around killing one another. A side plot revolved around “dark academia” and a Christopher Marlowe scholar. But by the time I reached the midpoint of the book I had honestly lost interest. I kept chugging through but the latter part of the book didn’t garner any more of my attention or interest. Ultimately just kind of boring and it never managed to engage me.

[Erik Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meticulous and excellent. I'm afraid I initially took a careful build-up for a "slow start." I should have known better. Now I do. I'll certainly be reading more from Ford.

[Ctgt · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oof what a silly mess. The plot - a historian, trying to authenticate a long lost Christopher Marlowe play, somehow gets involved in Cold War espionage during the 1980s - is not nearly as much fun as I've made it sound. The tone is all over the place. We get gentle academic satire mixed with brutal assassinations, and the author seems to keep introducing new characters on every page until I forgot who was who and why I should care. Kind of a bummer.

[Liz (Quirky Cat) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't you just love it when a book gets reprinted? I know I do. It gives me a chance to notice books that I missed the first time around. In this instance, the book in question is actually older than I am, which is always pretty cool. The Scholars of Night by John M. Ford is getting republished by Tor Books and is perfect for all the mystery fans in the house.

Nicholas Hansard is a historical analyst who loves to delve into ancient documents and find the truth hidden within. It's a passion and a talent, and one that has brought him a fair share of attention.

Not to mention a second job. Unfortunately for Hansard, his latest exploration refuses to stay in the past, and it pulls him into a murder mystery that he was not prepared for. Yet there's no turning back once it has all been set in motion.

The Scholars of Night was such a fun and different spy novel (at least, for me). I love the idea of a scholar being sent on secret missions to stacks of old documents. There's something oddly endearing about that. That may just be the bookworm in me talking.

The novel itself was set in 1988, and you can see the influence of the times. Thanks to the Cold War vibe, there's this lingering threat, and it plays nicely with the more subtle parts of this spy thriller.
I'm going to give a lot of credit to Charles Stross' introduction (to the reprinted version, that is), as it really helped provide a lot of essential historical context. For me, it also helped to drive home how much John M. Ford was appreciated at the time.

This novel ended up being an absolute delight to read, with so many twists and turns (seriously, it's full of surprises). Once again, I'm grateful to have had a chance to read The Scholars of Night this time around.

Thanks to Tor Books and #NetGalley for making this book available for review. All opinions expressed are my own.

For more reviews check out Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

[Lensvol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant technothriller, if a little uneven at the end.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe more like three and a half stars.

It's a lean and effective little Cold War thriller that revolves around a recently discovered unknown play by Christopher Marlowe. I read the recent re-print with the foreword by Charles Stross. If you read that edition I strongly recommend reading the story first and then going back and reading the foreword. The book is a weird little time capsule of a moment right before the USSR fell when the inevitable victory of capitalism didn't seem so inevitable.

Stross refers to the story as "enigmatic" and I think that's an apt description. The ending can be interpreted in two ways. One reading is very cynical and bitter, about history repeating itself and nobody learning anything. The other is more optimistic but has all the depth of the lyrics from Genesis' "Land of Confusion." I greatly prefer the first interpretation, not just because it feels more narratively satisfying but also because Ford seems like too canny of a writer to go for the second.

And yet I don't feel certain about my conclusion, it's purely a matter of preference. Ford's actual feelings about certain things surface here and there in the subtext but what he wants you to take away from the novel seems opaque. I suppose that's fitting for a spy thriller that constantly keeps you guessing on who is double crossing whom and who are the "good guys," if anybody. It leaves you without a sense of closure and maybe that's what Ford intended, because trapped in that moment of time there was no sense of closure for the battle of supremacy over the world, even though that battle was about to end for the foreseeable future.

[Shaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clever and accomplished and somehow managing to delicately balance a very intricate plot, it also has the kind of deep characterization not often found in spy thriller type stories that I've read.

[Matthew Kresal · Rating 5 out of 5]

To say the Cold War was a golden age for spy fiction would be an understatement. Writers as wide-ranging as John le Carre, Len Deighton, and Tom Clancy launched careers and explored the decades-long conflict between East and West. When the front lines were invisible, the troops were the spies of both sides, and where science and technology, as well as historical grievances, all had a role to play. Few managed to bring together those strands as strongly as the late John M. Ford, who made his sole contribution to the genre with this 1988 thriller, now back in print after more than three decades.

In some ways, The Scholars of Night feels like Ford's attempt to pastiche much of the Cold War spy genre. His lead character, Professor Nicholas Hansard, is an American based out of a US university and working for a think tank. Much of the action takes place in the UK, where both a spy ring after a defense system and a seemingly lost play by Christopher Marlowe are all in the field with secrets, lies, and betrayal surrounding them. As that description might suggest, there are shades of everything from the more reality-based end of the genre represented by le Carre to the technothrillers of Clancy and his many imitators. What Ford pastiches the most, however, are writers such as Anthony Price and Duncan Kyle, working in a strong historical element into the narrative in the form of the Marlowe play and the birth of British intelligence in the Elizabethan era.

Yet, for all the apparent pastiche writing Ford does, his novel is very much its own beast. Ford effortlessly moves readers and narrative alike through time and space, from the then-present day of the late 1980s to the Elizabethan era. Indeed, sometimes doing so in the matter of paragraphs, moving from Hansard's attempt to authenticate the play manuscript and a burgeoning romance back in time to Marlowe and a host of familiar figures in the 1500s. That he does so while also exploring the backstories of the members of a spy ring and explaining the piece of technology they're after is all the more to Ford's credit as a writer. Yet, for all of its literary bent and sophistication, Ford never lets things get too complex or dense. The Scholars of Night isn't a large book, but a well-paced, if packed, narrative told inside less than 300 pages. It's a balancing act that Ford makes look effortless, making one wish he might have written more thrillers along these lines.

The Scholars of Night is a gem of a thriller. Ford brings together a wide berth of influences, from the late Cold War espionage and technology to British theatre and its history all in one neat, slim, but surprisingly loaded package. Overlooked back then, like so much of Ford's work apparently, perhaps now it will find its moment in the spotlight.

[Luke Stacks · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 1988 spy thriller that rewards close reading. Ford expertly subverted the "scholar-hero" character seen in the works of Umberto Eco, Tim Powers, and (later) Dan Brown. The main scholar in question, Nicholas Hansard, studies Christopher Marlowe, and on the side authenticates documents for a shadowy government agency called The White Group. In his free time, he plays games like Diplomacy, with real diplomats. When his mentor dies, Hansard takes one last job for The White Group, authenticating a long-lost Marlowe play about a guild of assassins. His research draws him into his mentor's plot, involving several key players in the global intelligence community.

Ford is interested in Marlowe as more than a MacGuffin. The Scholars of Night is his attempt to situate a revenge tragedy within the stakes of the Cold War. Intellectually, this is interesting, even if its main insight is not exactly original (mutually assured destruction seems logically sound, but it places the power of life and death in the hands of a few flawed, emotionally vulnerable people and the systems they designed). And I may have missed some key points--there are many--but I am not quite sure that all of the characters' perspectives make sense in the end.

Even though this book isn't as logically tight and emotionally resonant as The Dragon Waiting, it's still filled with bravura passages. The opening chapter keeps introducing new characters and situations without giving the reader a real sense of what's going on, but distracting them with atmosphere and novelty until the reader is deep in the fog. Each player holding a key piece of the actual MacGuffin gets a short biography, and they're highlights of the book; not strictly necessary, perhaps, but they flesh out the kinds of folks who are often the definition of dispensable in other suspense novels, and demonstrate why they've broken free of the Cold War consensus. The second half of the novel seesaws between Hansard's investigation and the spy WAGNER's rogue operation. In these sections, Ford was adept at cultivating the reader's suspicions by giving them a few wide targets--without revealing what being "correct" gets them, exactly.

[Dave Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Originally published in 1988, John M. Ford is one of the most lauded unknown authors I've encountered in a while. Robert Jordan extolls his writing and Neil Gaiman says this book is "really f*** brilliant", but I just didn't find it particularly engaging. I read plenty of novels from previous decades, so it wasn't that it was 40 years old but rather that Ford is one of those authors who creates extremely complex storylines and can't quite weave an entertaining story out of it. There were passages where I was completely lost about how it fit into the main narrative, with brand new characters but no older characters to help bridge things. Fifty pages later, the main character - Dr. Nicholas Hansard - returns but it's still another 20+ pages before they meet, and it becomes clear how the new characters fit into the story.

The tale itself is very much up my alley, though; Hansard is a Cold War scholar and historian who argues geopolitical theory with various experts, politicians, and military experts over a long-running Diplomacy game. Except he's also a spy and when a completely new play by Christopher Marlowe is unearthed, it's up to Hansard to figure out whether it's legit and what it means before anyone else does. With assassins, government intrigue, a complex warfare simulation game to demonstrate an inexplicable secret weapon (or algorithm?) and so much more, there's a great story here, or possibly two. Or even three. As is, however, I found it a slog. Your experience may vary!

[Julien L · Rating 4 out of 5]

A reissue of a spy novel by one of the underrated gems in the fantasy/sci-fi community, one that eschews the generic conventions of the spy genre as determined by movies up to this point. In some aspects, genres bleed into each other here; this one feels more like a detective novel, the way all the clues add up and reveal themselves in the end, the intentional leaving of the reader in the dark, forcing them to connect dots and reveal patterns. Where I think it differs, is the brutal efficiency with which characters are dispatched from the narrative.

Ford is a gamesman, and figuring out the novel as you read it is both a puzzle and a strategy game, one where the moves and movements are oblique but make sense in the ending strategy. Thematically too, it is a novel about the games powerful people play with each other, at the expense of the lives of those of lower station than them. That the narrative makes these agencies have too much agency is a key point, and central to the novel's cold war history; the cold war seems like a game of attrition, where the players lead pawns across a board. The characters here are too comfortable moving people's lives into different places.

good stuff.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a 1988 thriller. It was recently re-released by Tor Books. Nicholas Hansard is a brilliant historian with a well-respected career in Elizabethan drama. He specializes in the plays of Christopher Marlowe. He is also the well-paid star analyst for a semi-public think tank involved in espionage and spies.

His study of recently discovered secret WW2 documents seems to have led to the death of his friend, Allan Berenson, a brilliant academic. Hansard tries to withdraw from the clandestine world. He is convinced to carry out one last assignment. The job takes him to London where he has to unravel mysteries of Christopher Marlowe to get to the bottom of his assignment. Ford has a very effective and ruthless female villain who was Berenson's protege. She is trying to steal top level miliary secrets for the Soviets. Hansard's Marlowe research becomes the key to stopping her.

This is a first-class thriller. It is smart and well-constructed. The action scenes are exciting. There is a very scary bicycle riding assassin. The subtext is the danger of academics being corrupted by taking money to work for the government.

[Sean McDonald · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beats the hell out of me what this book is about. A dead soldier from WWII is pulled out of a lake forty years after his death and hes carrying secret documents that identify deep cover spies from ..... Russia maybe? They all have code names that can be used to identify them which is REALLY not what code names are supposed to do but okay. Theres a guy who reads stuff and s then theres a female spy, WAGNER, working for..... someone i guess but she also works as some sort of military military simulation group and she cracks the codes because reasons or something and then theres a computer program ......exists i guess. The male 'lead' is super dull and knew a guy who turns out to be a one of the deep cover spies and is killed by WAGNER because.....hes a spy i guess.
88 pages in and i have zero clue as to whats going on or why its important......Honestly, its so bloody opaque that im just at gonna DNF ..... its almost as if someone spliced several unrelated films together but they arent complimentary..... its a confusing opaque mess feankly.

[Joe Callingham · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novel endowed with the preoccupations of the pre-internet 1980's, "The Scholars of the Night" mashes together the glitz of academia with the suspense of being a spy. Surprisingly, the combination works quite well, largely thanks to the engaging characterisations throughout the novel. The main issue with the text is that John M. Ford is not a forgiving author. There is little in the way of reminders of what has occurred previously in novel, and many moving parts to the plot that are often advanced by adjacent characters to the protagonist. Therefore, I strongly recommend reading this in the same week you start it, otherwise you are just along for the ride and will miss the impact of some nice turns in the plot. The last weakness of the novel was that the final twist was so obvious it did not seem like Ford was going to play it out like that. Unfortunately the most obvious conclusion a major plot point is true, despite Ford's success in producing a multi-layered plot.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me start by saying I'm a BIG fan of spy novels. This means you can probably discount a star from my review because of it. That said, Ford's novel is top-notch, masterfully capturing all the elements of the spy genera. On top of this, he sprinkles his own SF legacy which makes it doubly wonderful.

One of the things that were impressive was how much historic fact he wove into the story. It's quite atypical for both SF and spy novels, however, Ford merges all with a deep historical vein, making it a very intelligent book with some great golden nuggets in it.

If you like spy novels this is definitely for you. Make sure you clear your schedule as it will be difficult to stop reading it ;)

[crypt reads · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pros
🕵️‍♂️ Elizabethan drama spliced with cold war politics

Cons
😞 overcrowded cast
😞 kind of flat characters
😞 felt like two separate stories scotch taped together
😞 formatting was a bit exhausting

Maybe it's because I don't typically read spy thrillers, but this really didn't do it for me. I wanted it to; it sounded interesting, and I like it as a concept, but execution-wise it's not for me. I found myself skimming over huge parts of it, unable to make myself care about the characters and their situation. I was very into the play plot, but even that got a little exhausting.

At some point, I want to check out Ford's fantasy writing. That's more my usual thing, and I'd be interested to see if it's the genre or his writing I'm not into. But I'm not in a huge rush to get to that read.