Good Reads meta-data is 529 pages, rated 3.9 by 759 citizens
Genre: Krimi
Verdict: Oh hum
Another in a long series of the adventures of Inspector Fredrick Troy. In it he crosses the path of Kim Philby’s network of Soviet spies in England. As always in these krimis Troy finds incompetence vying with corruption in the English policing, politics, and society. He, like Christopher Foyle, is alone virtuous. All other are fallen.
Troy continues to feel sorry for himself though the early years of the Cold War in 1956. He combines upper class snobbery with world weary ennuni. He is a man of many parts. On the one hand every short-changing newsagent sets him off on the lecture about the corruption of the British, while on the other he accepts or ignores his brother-in-law’s admission of murder, his wife’s years as a Soviet agent whose work no doubt took lives, and a traitorous old school tie. The sanctimonious Troy evidently sees no contradiction in any of this hypocrisy. There is, alas, no reason to think any of this is ironic.
There are estimates that the information Philby supplied to the KGB led to the torture and murder of about sixty individuals, and the imprisonment of more. The victims were largely anti-Soviet nationals in Central and Southern Europe. None of these events bothers Troy as much as a Special Branch officer demanding to see his ID.
In character Troy is exactly the sort of disaffected child of privilege that the Soviets recruited. This is an irony beyond the author’s ken.
The plot is intricate but it takes a millennium for it to evolve. Every page is padded with lengthy and pointless descriptions, e.g., of the cracking brickwork of a train station, or the clothes of woman. I gave up reading most of this descriptions since it did not contribute to plot or character.
It is well-written true. The plot, when it finally emerges, is neat. The characters are diverse. But…. well, it seemed like a very long short story that went nowhere for scores of chapters. I flipped through a third of it without losing the thread. Maybe more. Nor did I feel like I was missing anything.
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