A FAN’S NOTES

Len Deighton 1929 - 2026

The Associated Press’s canned obituary for English author Len Deighton employed the perfect adjective to describe his unique contribution to spy fiction: “grubby.” He was a contemporary of Ian Fleming and John le Carre. The espionage thriller genre is such that there was plenty of space for three very different styles: comic book, cerebral and detective noir.

Their common thread is the Cold War and Britain’s secret intelligence services (SIS). Should a researcher examine their dossiers (provided they’ve not been purposely misfiled, destroyed or otherwise tampered with), they will unearth some curious, if frayed, tenuous links. Eric Ambler, more a contemporary of Graham Greene’s, was a major influence on our three authors, as was Greene, who himself was an admirer of Ambler. When James Bond must fly to Istanbul to collect a stolen Soviet cypher machine in From Russia with Love, he packs an Ambler novel for first class BOAC distraction.

Fleming, a working journalist like Greene, spent the Second World War in British Naval Intelligence. It’s been plausibly posited he became an MI6 (external intelligence) asset afterward and remained one for the rest of his life. Greene was an MI6 veteran (Our Man in Havana, a scathing satire, did not play well with Britain’s Official Secrets Act). Le Carre worked for both branches of the SIS, MI5 (internal intelligence) and MI6. Ambler and Deighton, military veterans themselves, sprang from the advertising industry, the former a copywriter and the latter a commercial artist.

My father introduced me to le Carre. Even when I was at my most distant and wayward, we always had something to discuss over the phone; me in Montreal, him in Ottawa. Le Carre wasn’t a magazine masthead, there wasn’t a new novel every month. Still too much of a snob to appreciate Fleming’s prose (His time would come by the grace of Calgary Transit), I’d exhausted Greene and Ambler. I needed an alternative to them and the literature I was studying in university (God, if I manage to read 26 books a year now, two per month, I congratulate myself – I keep an annual list).

A haunt of mine in Montreal that was not a record store was the Classic Bookshop at the corner of Ste-Catherine and Crescent. It was proximate to Concordia University and an easy walk from my studio apartment a little farther west, a block north along de Maisonneuve. The Triad Grafton paperback editions of Deighton’s novels jumped and popped from the shelves, facing out. Lots of white space. The author’s name was bold and black, all caps, a sans serif font – I want to say Futura. The title followed the same template although reduced by a few points and rendered in a contrasting colour. The graphic was always a close-cropped, plot-suggestive collage of dirty work: always a revolver, a bullet or two, a cigarette butt and maybe a champagne cork. Their design uniformity reminded me of Paul Hogarth’s often sinister watercolours on Graham Greene Penguins.

What I read when I took a chance on Funeral in Berlin stunned me. The characters weren’t mandarins in public school ties flouncing about and playing at espionage. Deighton’s style evoked Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. This was British Invasion prose: detective noir right back at you from swingin’ London, not from Carnaby Street so much as the shadow of a railway arch on a dreary dead-end street on a rainy night. No place for toffs, just hard-bitten operatives with decent vocabularies. It was impossible not to be reminded of the eloquent grit in the gears of Britain’s class system: Room at the Top; Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; This Sporting Life. Kingsley Amis (a favourite of mine) need not apply.

There are no substitutes for Deighton; indeed, neither le Carre or Fleming. Each writer was unique. Ted Allbeury, a former agent in Churchill’s Special Operations Executive, tried. He attempted to touch all the bases. The words didn’t quite work despite his wealth of inside knowledge and field expertise. I can’t remember the plots or even the titles of the few used novels I’ve read by him.  

Horse Under Water, Deighton’s second novel and one of five or six featuring his cynical, anonymous narrator (Michael Caine as “Harry Palmer” in the movies) is on my night table. Excepting his cookbook, I’ve read everything Deighton has written including his fine military histories. These past few years I’ve been revisiting him in increments, a couple of his titles over the course of a year’s reading.

One of the sustained pleasures of my life has been propping myself up in bed and reading before lights out. The post-midnight stamina I used to depend on has dissipated. My eyes are frequently as tired as I am; I need reading glasses. Staying awake is a chore best left undone, yet some ingrained habits are so hard to break. Deighton used to keep me up well in to the wee small hours; he still gives it his best. In these days of pension cheques and senior discounts, some of the pleasure of rereading him after a gap of 30 or 40 years is knowing I’ve neither school nor work to worry about in the morning. Just my bladder, still, thankfully, as regular as any alarm clock.                                       

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is still out there languishing in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set!

HUMAN WRECKAGE

Fleeting Crossword Soul Searching

I was standing at the kitchen sink, a waffled tea towel in my hand. I’d decided I’d give Jesus the morning off from drying our breakfast dishes, what with Easter chocolate on grocery store shelves and Facebook’s “memories” function prepping to remind Him of the worst-ever long weekend of His short life. Ann was seated at the counter, the Crooked 9’s command centre: phones, paper, pencils and pens at hand, the bulletin board and wall calendar hanging to her right. She was studying Sunday’s New York Times crossword: always a themed, expanded grid (21x21 as opposed to the other six days’ 15x15) and generally “Thursday” difficulty.

Ann said, “You should know this one, 98-across: ‘Letters on a crucifix.’”

I said, “Four letters?”

Ann said, “Four letters.”

I wiped my Who logo coffee mug dry. Pontius Pilate’s mocking acronym was just beyond the tip of my tongue, floating there by the cupboard door handle. Oh, God, I thought, I should know this one. I really should.

My father’s parents were both British; they met (in church, as it happens) and married in Montreal. My father was raised in the Church of England. Speaking with him late in his life (and much later in my own), I came to understand that any faith that had been ingrained in him did not withstand night fighter sorties over the Continent, nor even the shocking toll exacted on his squadron by training flights over Scotland and the North Sea. My mother grew up in a Roman Catholic family. Her father was of Irish extraction and her mother was French-Canadian. When my parents married in 1950, the in-laws agreed that the grandchildren would be raised Catholic. I doubt my father cared one way or the other.

There were religious icons in my childhood bedroom, co-existing with the bogeyman in the closet and the monster under my bed. My guardian angel was a little boy in a blue robe with unnaturally large eyes. He had wings of course, and a prop, maybe a harp. He never struck me as entirely fit for the night watch. Beneath his portrait was a wooden crucifix with a bronzed Jesus nailed to it. Above his slumped head was an unfurled though curling scroll of bronzed vellum inscribed with some abbreviated Latin. Four letters.

Judas! It wasn’t long before my guardian angel and the decent fellow who died for the sins I committed even before I was born were replaced by an even bigger superhero, rendered almost half the size I actually was. I don’t know who inked and coloured Spider-Man in the late 60s; Stan Lee, I presume. Spidey was coming to my rescue, on the run. His blue, red and black costume popped from a plain white background. Decades were to pass before I came to appreciate the use of negative space in art and design, and to a certain extent, music and writing. Allow the viewer, listener and reader to fill in the blanks as (and if) required.

The web-slinging, wall-crawler’s flaw (because every hero has one, tragic or otherwise) was his inability to skate. He did not appear on the hockey posters I could get by saving up Coca-Cola bottlecap liners nor was he present on the hockey collectibles my father was handed at the Esso station for putting a “tiger in the tank” of our maroon Beaumont. Spidey did not play for the Montreal Canadiens. The hockey players on my wall had short careers – as most athletes do; Mick Jagger was waiting to go on, coked up and jittery.

I said to Ann, “Can you cross it with anything? I’m wracking my brain.”

She said, “No, but I think there’s an ‘I’.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

IRAE: “Dies – (requiem hymn)”; IRIE: “A-okay in some slang”; INXS: “‘Listen like Thieves’ band”; INRE: “Memo abbrev.”; NIHI: “Bygone grape soda”; INTO: “Fan of”; RANI: “Hindu queen” …

FUCK! (Crude, inappropriate and inarticulate exclamation often indictive of poor education and limited vocabulary.)

When the Tuesday Night Beer Club convenes Stats Guy, Ted and I often stump ourselves talking hockey players, baseball standings, epic war movie casts and celluloid Bond girls. Stats Guy always says, “We can googalize it.” Ted pulls out his phone. I always demure; hungover Catholics instinctively understand instant gratification is sinful. Safer in the long term to wait, believe in the payout at Saint Peter’s heavenly wagering window. I can’t imagine a devoted Roman Catholic signing up for Amazon Prime.

Ann said, “Got it!” She’d crossed the rubric. “INRI.”

“That’s it!” I cried.

“What’s it mean?”

Yessir, that’s my unbaptized pagan baby! I said, “Ah….” The ancient Roman alphabet consists of just 23 letters. Perfectly adequate for writing Latin, I suppose (their numbering system is unwieldy – the concept of zero as a digit in Western mathematics was still centuries hence). “'King of the Jews' or something like that,” I continued. A reminder of Rome’s absolute authority in Judea. Cut to Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

I could and still can see the faded green and yellowing Palm Sunday frond up against the wall in my pale blue bedroom, tucked behind the crucifix. I had to googalize INRI: Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum.

INRE to INRI: Unless 98-across comes up again in the next couple of weeks, I’m not going to remember any of this. Storage capacity is limited and there is more meaningful arcana to retain. Like the running order of It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll. Is “Luxury” on side one or side two? I knew that. Or I did.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is available in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did remains in print. Collect the set! They're moving faster than gas station hockey posters. While supplies last!

SAINTS PRESERVE US

Mixed Emotions in Alberta

The Iran war is now in its second raging week. Taking my cue from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, I’m just trying to make some sense of it all. I’m unsure, ambivalent and kind of uncertain all at once.

I don’t believe a fascist and hardline sectarian theocracy that addresses human rights within its borders with torture and guns, wages regional warfare by proxy and who tacitly supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and ensuing years of quagmire is a particularly noble national endeavour. I wonder about the end result or even if there will be such a thing. The odious and incompetent regime in Venezuela simply grew another head following the recent American decapitation operation. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan: plus ca change. I worry too that FIFA, that gleefully corrupt organization behind football’s World Cup, is contemplating rescinding its inaugural “peace prize,” that shabby, ass-licking token it bestowed on der Trumpenfuhrer because the US Congress, the United Nations Security Council and The Hague (where the remanding of alleged war criminals is frequently stymied by lawyers, diplomatic immunity and finessed extradition treaties) may conclude an illegal war isn’t simply laissez-faire.

But, man, typing at my writing table in the Crooked 9 here in the United Conservative Kingdom of Alberta, I know one thing for sure: War in the Middle East is a barrel of oil’s golden goose. Alberta is Canada’s petro-province. An alarming number of residents imagine it as a state of some sort. The fiscal fortunes of generations of provincial governments have been in lock-step with the cyclonic boom-and-bust cycles of the energy industry. Good times are credited to local know-how and Alberta’s can-do spirit. Bad times are blamed on geopolitics and the remote, elitist eastern mandarins (bastards all) in Ottawa, uncontrollable factors. Consequently, a consistent narrative in a one-horse town can get tricky.

The official political discourse the week prior to the Iranian adventure was interesting. Premier Danielle Smith, the Banshee of Invermectin, addressed the province days before her government’s budget was to be tabled in the legislature. Her oratory, always glib, signalled hard times ahead. Serious ground softening, a rhetorical barrage. Tar sands royalties ain’t what they used to be. Assigning blame, she rounded up the usual suspect. Former prime minister Justin Trudeau was allocated his usual place up against the wall. Ineffectual as he was, he of course (and every other Canadian taxpayer) got Alberta’s precious Trans Mountain pipeline extension done. Yarded on it, just gave 'er, bud. But, never mind. Shockingly, Smith’s updated and expanded hit list included recent immigrants to her formerly fair province. It’s important to remember that two successive United Conservative Party administrations paid for “Alberta Calling,” a nationwide ad campaign designed to attract newcomers. Smith is on record as saying she’d like to see Alberta’s population double. Fuck me if she didn’t remember the province’s teetering health care and K-12 education systems. Apparently, they’re strained now.

And then the bomb, assembled by sweaty, unsteady hands, dropped. The ultimate deflection of reality. Potentially explosive. Next October, the Government of Alberta will embark on a direct democracy exercise. Pandering to the lowest common denominator. A referendum consisting of nine questions concerned with curtailing the rights and privileges of newcomers, and that squishy can of often-impotent worms, the morass of documents that comprise Canada’s Constitution. Albertans will have something else to contemplate other than the sheer incompetence of their UCP government. And by the grace of every fiery evangelical preacher who ever lived, the party’s lunatic fringe gets a sanctified bone.   

Smith’s subsequent austerity budget predicted a deficit of some $9.4 billion. This contravened the UCP’s own legislation banning three consecutive annual provincial deficits. Funny thing about laws, if you make ‘em you can break ‘em. Financial analysts were concerned that the UCP numbers were predicated on a blue-sky oil price, one that didn’t jibe with the US Department of Energy’s assessment or those of industry analysts. And fair enough, estimates informed as they may be, are predictions.

Monday morning you sure look fine. The Middle East erupted last weekend. Sometimes circumstances collude and collide and geopolitics shake down on the right’s side: the UCP’s Monday morning caucus meeting must have been jubilant, some kind of stilted bacchanal. Oil is like miraculous ocean surf in this landlocked place, way up. As for the inevitable inflationary spiral that will cause, gasoline, jet fuel, logistics, what have you, Smith will blame the usual suspects, both new and used.

Here at home, I see a provincial government crippled by its own inflexible ideology and thus barely competent. The UCP means well for the most part, all things considered, I think. Broadening my view, I discern a similar pattern the world over although motive and intent for many are definitely suspect. Anyway, a good week for some. And so it goes. More to come.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. Sunset Oasis Confidential is still out there languishing in multiple formats. Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com for links to your preferred retailer. Of Course You Did is still in print. Collect the set!