I read this book for the Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge 2013.
The challenge is to read 16 or more Vintage Mysteries. All novels must have
been originally written before 1960 and be from the mystery category.
I read this for Theme #5, Jolly Old England: one mystery
set in Britain
The Enormous
Shadow – Robert Harling
This Cold War story from 1955 is set in London, with many
references streets like King’s Road and places such as Chester Square and Tower
Bridge. Before WWII, Harling published The
London Miscellany, a survey of the design of Victorian London, so he knew the
city inside and out.
In fact, this is a newspaper thriller because the
narrator is an international correspondent. While his base in New York City, he
is on vacation in London, checking in with his wily editor in chief. Said boss
assigns him to interview up and coming MP’s. One of the MP’s, the reporter
finds, may be a traitor. Working in tandem with a dodgy mathematician, he may
be passing guided missle secrets to the Soviets.
While the action may feel slow to some readers, the pace
is steady and incidents unfold with surprises all down the line to a rousing
climax. Harling’s prose is clear and civilized. The love story grows naturally
out of the action and is believable. To my mind, the appeal is the verisimilitude.
Harling worked on Fleet Street before the advent of our information age, so his
stories of tough editors, hard-bitten reporters, and their dance with the
authorities in government and the police ring true to life. Any reader who
likes stories about newspaper trade before Rupert Murdoch and ilk will
certainly enjoy Harling’s chronicle of a vanished world, little known outside
the memoirs of forgotten journalists.
Don’t confuse this writer with the playwright famous for
the 1985 hit Steel Magnolias. Our
Harling here was one of those versatile Englishmen who were skilled at both the
arts and espionage. He worked in publishing, as a typographer and graphic
designer. During WWII, his friend Ian Fleming, later creator of James Bond, got
him transferred into Fleming's Secret Navy, which “was responsible for
day-to-day liaison between the naval intelligence division and the British war
propaganda teams (see
Harling’s obit here).”
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