Status Updates From The Mask of Memory

It’s been me and the spies, for the last few days; I watched one of my fave films, Operation Crossbow, yesterday, and then finally got to see the film version of The Fourth Protocol today. Pierce Brosnan of 1984 looks very different...but Michael Caine, crazily enough, looks the same to me.

Anyway, this book is another great spy experience.

I’m betting I’ll always find Canning’s style a bit stiff and cold...but the plot to this one is compelling, and that whole distancing effect caused by the cold style actually kind of works. Margaret’s world is bleak, and the style reinforces that, but not in overwrought fashion.

Suddenly, less love story (if you can all it that), and more spy content. Either way - though a bit slow-going, I’m intrigued overall.

This is definitely a far more interesting novel than that other of his I read, The Whip Hand. Another spy novel that just wants to be a a "strange love" tale - I just had one of those not long ago, and my next spy novel better be an action romp of some kind - but I am really enjoying this quiet, haunting book. Flashing back to various: Rebecca, a William Trevor novel, James M. Cain, le Carre, even J G Ballard.

I like it. Margaret Tucker is already a fascinating character...and Maxie is already creepy. The early sequence involving kleptomania reminded me of the beginning of the old Gene Tierney film called Whirlpool - but the really odd link-up was the inclusion of nuns caring for orphans in this novel, because there were nuns running an orphanage in the novel I just read. Ah, coincidence.

I would like to read Canning’s The Rainbird Pattern, the source for Hitchcock’s final film, Family Plot, which I absolutely love. But for now, I’ll try this spy novel; The Whip Hand, by this author, was a disappointment, unfortunately. But, we’ll see how I do with this one.