High Wire

by William Haggard

Detective. Signet D2519 1964 First Thus in Very good condition, no creasing to spine, no marks, pages normally tanning. We ship daily from Wisconsin.

Genres: Thriller

Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

William Haggard (born Croydon 11 August 1907, died Frinton-on-Sea 27 October 1993) was the pseudonym of Richard Henry Michael Clayton, the son of the Rev. Henry James Clayton and Mabel Sarah Clayton. He was an English writer of fictional spy thrillers set in the 1960s through the 1980s, or, as the writer H. R. F. Keating called them, "action novels of international power." Like C. P. Snow, he was a quintessentially British Establishment figure who had been a civil servant in India, and his books vigorously put forth his perhaps idiosyncratic points of view. The principle character in most of his novels is the urbane Colonel Charles Russell of the fictional Security Executive, (clearly based on the actual MI5 or Security Service), who moves easily and gracefully along Snow's Corridors of Power in Whitehall. During the years of the fictional spy mania initially begun by the James Bond stories, Haggard was considered by most critics to be at the very top of the field.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is Project A? One of the few people who knows is Rex Hadley, recently put in charge of the Maldington complex where Project A is being produced before he was sent off to vacation in the Italian alps. That’s when things take a turn for the worse, when he realizes he may have drunkenly blurted out some incriminating details about Project A to his three dining companions: a foreign military attaché named de Fleury, de Fleury's mistress Mary Francom, and a left-wing journalist. Within a few days, the journalist is found dead, and de Fleury is putting the screws to Hadley—blackmail, pressuring him for information about the project.

Luckily for Hadley, de Fluery’s mistress Mary is a spy herself, working for the British Security Executive and keeping tabs on de Fleury. Colonel Charles Russell of the Security Executive is on the case; their goal is to keep Hadley safe without revealing any information about Project A to foreign powers. As Hadley—attempting to escape a failed marriage through England’s strict divorce laws—falls for Mary, de Fluery’s handler ratchets up the pressure to learn the secrets of Project A.

Poor Rex is caught in the middle of a game of cat and mouse; without knowing it, he narrowly evades being roughed up by foreign mercenaries thanks to quick maneuvering by Charles Russell. In the world of spies, exposure to the public eye can be worse than death—and the Colonel is adept at keeping the public blind to the cloak-and-dagger maneuvering, even keeping Rex unaware of the Security Executive's involvement. There’s a lot of tension and a lot of ace maneuvering; it’s not an “action-packed” novel in terms of fight scenes and whatnot, but it has plenty of excitement and some class-A adventure. And the climax is plenty explosive, as promised.

The High Wire may seem low-key compared to today’s espionage thrillers, lacking a lot of car chases and gunfights, but I enjoyed its more cerebral and realistic depiction of subterfuge. Haggard isn’t shy on tension or suspense either, and if you can keep abreast of the novel’s intricate plot the experience is richly rewarding. It’s a taut game of cat and mouse played out across Europe for a mysterious industrial/scientific breakthrough. And I’m very thankful that Singularity&Co. chose it as their first adventure to save, because it’s a worthy choice.

(Full review found here.)

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

The further I got into this book, the more I dug it. Written in 1963, it's been out of print for ages and exists in digital form only through the efforts of the folks at Singularity & Co, who are slowly tracking down the rights to forgotten adventure and sci-fi novels and getting them back in circulation. Apparently William Haggard, the author of this effort, was once considered among the best of the flurry of espionage writers who appeared when James Bond became a money-making machine (according to The Independent, Haggard was once called "the adult's Ian Fleming" which is a pretty fabulous combo dis-praise) and, on the basis of this book, it's easy to see why. It's unusually dense for a spy story and, rather than being filled by willing women, dapper spies and action up to here, it's instead populated by fiercely competent, aging British civil servants (if there's such a thing as a procedural spy novel, this is it), most of whom are varying degrees of cynical, an incredibly complex blackmailer, and one kickass lady who rarely conforms to expectations. And it's AWESOME.