* * * * *
The best of the Tom Wilde spy series so far.
(This review is based on a free review copy from the publisher via NetGalley UK)
A political-context spy thriller set in England during the run up to Hugh Dalton’s first post-war budget when the future of Great Britain was about to be redefined for generations to come, even if there were neither external threats nor internal plots. The Chinese see such moments of uncertainty as having the potential, for those willing to take action, to change the future when at most other times such actions will fail no matter how hard the protagonists strive. The Chinese appear in this story only as victims of Japanese atrocity, but I find it interesting that the author chose to set his novel at a time when Chinese philosophy might expect such a plot to be potentially decisive, whereas the Gunpowder Plot, for example, was probably destined to fail in its ultimate objective whether the explosives did their murderous work or not.
This is about biological warfare and “Camp 731” in Manchuria, where ruthless experiments on many innocent people were used to develop a number of deadly diseases as weapons. The author has done his research well enough to know that “Porton Down” was actually two separate establishments at the time: MRD Salisbury was the Biological laboratory and CDE Salisbury was the much older Chemical Research Establishment: they shared a canteen building and, post-war, a civilian director. But staff stuck to their own laboratories in their own buildings (in whose technical procedures they were experts) for very compelling safety reasons as well as any reason of national security.
Neither MRD or CDE ever exclusively concentrated on military work, let alone chemical or biological warfare work and in the story the main contribution which MRD experts make is to contain a disease outbreak, understand what the causative agent is and supervise the care of those afflicted by it. This is perfectly credible, when so little of what is written about Porton Down is.* And it is worth noting that while Japanese scientists at Camp 731 were committing countless atrocities to develop the most demonic biological weapons possible, the mundane sanitation and hygiene work done by MRD and CDE to protect Commonwealth and Allied soldiers from naturally-occurring tropical diseases was credited by Lord Louis Mountbatten with being the single most important factor in the Fourteenth Army’s success in liberating Burma from Japanese occupation.
This is also a story about the main protagonist’s experience and extensive knowledge of fascists and NAZI’s being exploited to mislead him, and there are very considerable plot twists (which might challenge our assumptions about the present day) towards the end of an exciting, gripping and readable story. Which also gets the period social background about right.
* The exception is Alistair Maclean’s “The Satan Bug”. Someone who worked at MRD at the time read a copy I gave her and said that he got everything right except that the high security fence was around CDE and he put it, for dramatic purposes, around MRD -and in one sentence he confuses “toxin” with “virus” which is a mistake you’d expect a classical languages teacher to make, because in that context they both mean “something that makes one ill.” The same former MRD researcher also said that almost none of the “investigative reporting” of the journalist Chapman Pincher about Porton Down was accurate and that staff played a game, via a noticeboard in the canteen whereby, every Christmas, the employees who’d got Pincher to publish the most ridiculous story AND buy his informant a nice meal won a share of a kitty that had accumulated throughout the year. You pinned up the article you’d got him to publish with a summary of the meal he’d paid for and put a few shillings in the kitty towards the handsome prizes.
The English Fuhrer by Rory Clements is published by Bonnier Books UK on the 19th of January 2023.
