Helen MacInnes

• Born: October 7, 1907
• Birthplace: Glasgow, Scotland
• Died: September 30, 1985
• Place of death: New York, New York

Types of Plot: Amateur sleuth; espionage

Contribution

At the height of her popularity, Helen MacInnes was known as the “queen of international espionage fiction.” Although her novels contain much less sex and violence than others of the genre, they are highly suspenseful. In addition, they are based on an appreciation of justice, freedom, and individual dignity. Perhaps the most characteristic element of MacInnes’s novels is their settings, which are invariably beautiful and of historic interest. The capital cities of Europe and its many forests, lakes, castles, and opera houses are described in such detail that the novels may be enjoyed as travel books. Brittany, Salzburg, Málaga, Venice, and Rome come alive for the reader. MacInnes’s love for these and other spots of the world, as well as her appreciation of democratic values, illuminates and enhances her novels.

Biography

Helen Clark MacInnes was born on October 7, 1907, in Glasgow, Scotland, where she was also educated. She married Gilbert Highet, a Greek and Latin scholar, in 1932. To finance trips abroad they collaborated in translating books into English from German. The couple moved to the United States in 1937. After her son was born, MacInnes began writing her first novel. Above Suspicion (1941) not only was an immediate best seller but also was made into a popular film, as were Assignment in Brittany (1942), The Venetian Affair (1963), and The Salzburg Connection (1968). The film Assignment in Brittany was used to help train intelligence operatives during World War II.

During the course of her life, MacInnes wrote more than twenty novels and a play. Her novels were highly successful, and more than 23 million copies of her books have been sold in the United States alone. They have been translated into twenty-two languages including Portuguese, Greek, Arabic, Tamil, Hindi, and Urdu. Her work is admired by both the general audience and professional intelligence agents. Allen Dulles, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, called MacInnes a “natural master of the thriller” and included an excerpt from Assignment in Brittany in an anthology of espionage literature that he compiled. Not all of her novels, however, concerned espionage in foreign lands. Friends and Lovers (1947) was a semiautobiographical love story set at Oxford University in England, and Rest and Be Thankful (1949) satirized the New York literary and critical establishment, showing some of its members trying to survive at a dude ranch in Wyoming.

In 1985, MacInnes died in Manhattan following a stroke. Her death occurred shortly after her last novel, Ride a Pale Horse (1984), appeared on The New York Times paperback best-seller list.

Analysis

Helen MacInnes began her first novel, Above Suspicion, after an apprenticeship that included translating German works with her husband and taking careful notes on the political situation in Germany. Like her succeeding novels, it is based on the necessity of resisting the advance of Nazism. During World War II, the enemy was the Gestapo, the German secret police. MacInnes writes that after the war, villainous Nazis were replaced by communists and terrorists who were convinced of the superiority of their own ideologies and disdained Western democratic values, which they considered decadent. Because of their discipline, efficiency, and toughness the enemies of freedom could achieve limited success in the short run but were ultimately doomed to be overwhelmed by the forces of good.

MacInnes disapproved heartily of dictatorships of both the Left and the Right. Indeed, she considered herself a Jeffersonian democrat, and her books promote the ideals of freedom and democracy. The earlier novels not only demonstrate the evils of fascism but also insist on the danger of pacifism in the face of the Nazi threat. The later novels pitch the evils of communism and the danger of appeasing the Soviet Union. MacInnes’s work is not harmed by such overt political commentary. On the contrary, her novels lack the sense of languor and depression, even boredom, that certain modern espionage novels exhibit. MacInnes’s professional intelligence agents, a few of whom appear in more than one novel, are skillful operatives who love their country. There is no doubt in their minds that the Western democracies are morally superior to the governments of their enemies. This conviction is in strong contrast to the posture of the operatives in the novels of John le Carré or Len Deighton, who seem to see little difference between the methodology and goals of the Soviet Union and those of the West.

To convince the reader that Western intelligence operatives and U.S. State Department personnel are truly patriotic, MacInnes affords her audience glimpses into the mental processes of her characters. They are not professional agents, but they learn the craft of intelligence quickly after they are recruited by a professional agent for a mission. MacInnes’s early heroes are often academics, while later heroes include a music critic, an art consultant, and a playwright. Their occupations allow MacInnes to comment on the current state of painting, music, and theater, which, for the most part, she finds inferior to the comparable arts of the past. These heroes are typically good-looking, gentle, and kind, as well as brave, intelligent, and resourceful, but they are also lonely. Not at all promiscuous, these young men are waiting for the right woman to come along, and by the conclusion of nearly all the novels, they are usually committed to a monogamous relationship. The contrast with Ian Fleming’s James Bond is clear. Also unlike James Bond, MacInnes’s heroes are not superathletes and they do not possess technical devices with seemingly magical powers.

Above Suspicion

In Above Suspicion, Mrs. Frances Myles is the principal character, although her husband, Richard, proves to be braver, calmer, and more capable than she. In subsequent novels, MacInnes uses male heroes. Although she pays lip service to the idea of female equality, she seems to be afraid to compromise her heroines’ “femininity” by making them too intelligent or too brave. Young, beautiful women exist either to be rescued by the hero or, if they are enemy agents, to tempt him. The plucky hero is frequently pitted against a sexually predatory villainess; the latter may attract the hero initially but eventually disgusts him. This situation changes slightly in The Snare of the Hunter (1974), where the hero is aided by Jo Corelli, MacInnes’s version of the liberated career woman who is able to take charge.

The Double Image

In this and other ways, MacInnes always tried to be current. For details concerning espionage techniques, she drew on evidence collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Many of her plots were suggested by current events. The plot of The Double Image (1966), for example, was suggested by news reports that the grave of a Nazi war criminal was found to be bogus. This event reminded her of the possibility that several communist spies had masqueraded as Nazis during World War II, as Richard Sorge, a real historical figure, had done. MacInnes has also been lauded for the accurate manner in which she described the communist influence on the Algerian revolt against France, which took place in the early 1960’s. Indeed, she considered herself obligated not to falsify the past. It is interesting, however, that in her earlier novels she was more accurate about the details of the craft of espionage than in her later books. In the later novels, she chose to ignore certain technological advances, particularly in communications, because she believed that dedicated personnel were more important than gadgets.

MacInnes is most accurate in her use of locale. In Above Suspicion, the reader is given a picture of prewar Oxford, Paris, and Austria. In Assignment in Brittany, the reader is shown Brittany as it must have been when the Nazis first came to power; North from Rome (1958) affords the reader a tour of Italy; in Decision at Delphi (1961), the reader is taken on an excursion through Greece, and Message from Málaga (1971) is set in Spain. The Double Image and The Salzburg Connection focus on postwar Austria, a mecca for tourists visiting concert halls, opera houses, and quaint mountain villages. In fact, MacInnes’s most graphic writing is devoted to the historic delights of Europe and parts of Asia. In Prelude to Terror (1978), she describes the Neustrasse, a street in the Austrian town of Grinzing:

It was lined with more vintners’ cottages, their window boxes laden with bright petunias. Each had its walled courtyard, whose wide entrance doors stood partly open to show barrels and tables and more flowers. All of them had their own individual vineyards, long and narrow, stretching like a spread of stiff fingers up the sloping fields.

MacInnes’s language is simple but evocative. The accurate descriptions of her settings, as well as her obvious love for them, lend a depth and a resonance to her novels, affording them an additional dimension few other espionage novels achieve. Because her plots are structured around a chase, they are exciting. Reader interest is further heightened by the love story, which is an intrinsic element of these novels. Unless the hero and heroine are already married to each other, two attractive young people will certainly meet and fall in love. To this mixture of travelogue and romance, MacInnes adds elements of action and suspense, as the hero and heroine must avoid capture, torture, and even death.

MacInnes’s storytelling is tightly controlled. She keeps the reader’s attention by providing only small bits of information at a time and by provoking concern at appropriate intervals. Will the garage mechanic unknowingly betray the heroine to her enemy? Will the villain reach the hidden door and escape? In all the novels, the protagonists are in danger, but only minor characters, or evil ones, die or get seriously hurt. Murder and mayhem either occur offstage or are not described vividly, which is clearly not standard practice in the modern espionage novel. Another unusual element in these novels is the emphasis on romance coupled with an absence of sexual description. The limited amount of sexual activity that does occur is glossed over as discreetly as it would have been in a Victorian novel.

Without relying on graphic descriptions of violence or sexual behavior, MacInnes has managed to entertain a generation of readers by keeping them in great suspense as she exposes her extraordinarily likable characters to familiar dangers. She has made it apparent that just as her characters barely manage to avoid disaster, so too are democracy and freedom constantly threatened by the forces of terror and chaos. In addition to the stratagems MacInnes employs to involve the reader, the chases, which often serve as the foundation of her plots, take place in some of the most picturesque settings in the world.

Bibliography

Boyd, Mark K. “The Enduring Appeal of the Spy Thrillers of Helen MacInnes.” Clues: A Journal of Detection 4 (Fall/Winter, 1983): 66-75. A look at the aspects of MacInnes’s work that have contributed to its lasting popularity.

Breit, Harvey. The Writer Observed. Cleveland: World Publishing, 1956. Examination of the process of crafting fiction that uses MacInnes as one of its case studies.

Hitz, Frederick P. The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Hitz, the former inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency, compares fictional spies to actual intelligence agents to demonstrate that truth is stranger than fiction. Helps readers gain perspective on MacInnes’s work.

McDowell, Edwin. “Helen MacInnes: Seventy-seven, Novelist and Specialist in Spy Fiction.” The New York Times, October 1, 1985, p. B6. Obituary of Manhattan resident MacInnes describes her life, noting that an encounter with Nazis while on her honeymoon influenced her writing of Above Suspicion.

Seymour-Smith, M. Novels and Novelists. London: Windward, 1980. Discusses MacInnes as a novelist first and a mystery novelist second.

Terry, Stephen. “Helen MacInnes, Spy Novelist.” Evening Times, April 25, 2001, p. 14. Short profile of MacInnes that notes her Scottish roots and her renown as a writers of spy thrillers.