Book reviews: Serpentine | Rogue Nation

Published on Wednesday 24 June 2009 14:53

Serpentine BY Tom Morton Mainstream, 240pp, £9.99 Rogue Nation BY Alan Clements Mainstream, 240pp, £9.99 Reviews by LESLEY McDOWELL

THRILLERS DEPEND UPON THAT contradictory mixture of a reader's willing suspension of disbelief as well as an author's investment in authenticity. The world they create is utterly fake but the details are real: we know James Bond doesn't represent what it's really like working for MI5, but we believe in the gadgets, we recognise the product placement and we've at least heard of the locations.

Thriller writers get these details wrong at their own peril. Many years ago, while reviewing the only Jack Higgins novel I'd ever read, I was astonished to see his IRA character refer, without irony, to Northern Ireland as "Ulster". For a man brought up in Belfast, this seemed like an astonishing slip, and I can only put it down to too many bestsellers resulting in too many cocktails on too many fancy boats blunting his attention to the most obvious kind of detail.

So I'm pleased to see that neither Morton nor Clements have made any such blunders, keeping the detail in their respective thrillers as concise and as authentic as possible. Morton's novel focuses on a group of present and past government agents, mercenaries, police investigators and hired hitmen from Northern Ireland, all running around the Highlands thanks to the devious machinations of a shadowy figure called "Serpentine", and he pays tribute to a series of books and individuals that helped him achieve that right note of authenticity about the activities of those involved in the armed struggle in Northern Ireland, as well as military techniques and operations.

Clements's book, meanwhile, toys with a post-independence Scotland, where the Russians and Americans are poised on the edge of nuclear war and bombs are going off in Glasgow set by angry Unionist terrorists. More overtly political than Morton's novel, Clements ranges easily over government in-fighting and the power games played by those at the top in order to stay at the top, whilst also keeping close attention to the recent history of all the countries involved.

Clements has a further investment, though: he is part of the Curzon Group, founded to "end the reign of the production-line American thriller writers", and to "return the focus to domestic British authors". Apparently, Jeffrey Archer "will be advising the group". Do either Morton or Clements represent a return to the glory days of Alasdair Maclean, Ian Fleming and John le Carr, then, with these new novels that show such care and attention to detail?

It's hard to say. The willing suspension of disbelief required of me was stretched to the limit by both novels: I never knew Inverness was such a hive of secret government and anti-government activity, where not even retired lesbian agents can enjoy their peaceful Sapphic idyll without being captured or beaten to death by Irish Unionist thugs, as Morton has it. His heroine, Millie, luckily remembers the same training as her mercenary ex-boyfriend, Mark Murricane (Morton has a thing for names: his detective is, I kid you not, Zander Flaws), and always keeps a razor blade hidden in the right heel of her shoe, best for cutting through cable wire when you're tied up with it (both she and Murricane get to do this quite separately fairly early on). It's equally handy for Inverness and the Gaza Strip, apparently.

Similarly, I couldn't help laughing out loud at the prospect of a "Yes" vote for Scottish independence being relayed by a special operative to the Russian president waiting anxiously for the news. Who knew we were so important? Apparently we are, because the Russians want to stick some nuclear weapons on our land, and the Americans want to build a missile defence system on it. Before we know where we are, brains, talent and money are all heading south faster than we can say "Freedom" and we're poised on the edge of nuclear war.

Morton's writing style is more obviously parodic in a Chandler-esque way, with every character talking in the same hard-boiled, wise-cracking manner ("Ten four, babe. Wait till you see his wheels. He's got an old Land Rover, armoured. British Army surplus, straight out of f***ing Derry. You'll feel quite at home, Murricane!" This could easily be said by Millie, Irish terrorist Billy Boy, American double agent Clara, or, in this case, another mercenary, as they all sound exactly the same).

Clements eschews a speedy delivery style for Jeffrey Archer-inspired description ("Ross's cheekbones clenched and unclenched... Ross was cold and clipped..."), but both writers generally favour short chapter sections, short sentences, bit players popping up here, there and everywhere, and standard, utterly forgettable heroes and heroines.

Fleming, Maclean and le Carr were all writing in that post-Empire moment in British politics, when we were no longer the main world players and they wanted to continue the pretence that we were. Both Morton and Clements should be commended for trying to make Scotland a central part of their thriller worlds, for giving it an importance in world politics that it doesn't quite have. And yet that's what ultimately, in spite of their respective writing styles which may not be literary but do at least conform to thriller genre standards, lets them down.

There's only so much fantasy thrillers can cope with. Scottish independence destabilising the entire planet? Inverness throbbing with secret agents? It's all just a thriller fantasy too far.