Jimmy Sangster's private i (Spy Killer)

Jimmy Sangster was much better known as a screenwriter but he wrote a lot of novels. In the late 60s he wrote four spy thrillers, two featuring glamorous lady spy Katy Touchfeather and two featuring a spy named John Smith. A man whose real name really is John Smith. The first of the John Smith spy novels, private i, was published in 1967. It was later reissued with the much less interesting title Spy Killer.

The novel opens with John Smith in a lunatic asylum. He isn’t mad, but there seems no escape. We then flash back to the events that led him to such an unpleasant place.

John Smith works as a private enquiry agent (the British name for a private detective). He’s broke so he’s pleased to have a new client, a Mrs Dunning. The case should be straightforward. It’s a routine divorce case. The one very slight complication is that Mrs Dunning is John Smith’s ex-wife Danielle. Perhaps he should have realised that with Danielle involved the case probably wasn’t going to be straightforward after all.

Finding himself suspected of a murder is rather disturbing.

Smith gets really worried when Max shows up. Max had been his boss when he was in the Secret Service. The last thing Smith wants is to get mixed up in the sleazy world of espionage again. But that’s what’s happened.

And if Max is involved then Smith really wants nothing to do with any of it. He doesn’t have a choice. There is that murder charge hanging over his head.

Max wants the notebook. Smith doesn’t know anything about a notebook. But now he figures that if he doesn’t find the notebook Max will throw him to the wolves.

This was a time when spy fiction, and especially British spy fiction, was becoming very dark and cynical. This novel dials the cynicism up to the max. Smith quit the Secret Service after being ordered to take part in a massacre of poor dumb deluded young people who had been manipulated by various intelligence agencies. Smith particularly disliked having to blow a young girl’s face off with a shotgun. That’s when Smith decided he wasn’t cut out to be a spy.

And he knows Max’s methods. If someone is even a minor threat, or even just a minor inconvenience, Max has that person killed. They don’t have to be enemy agents. The British Secret Service is like a more amoral version of Murder Inc.

Smith wants to get rid of that notebook but he knows that as soon as he does he can look forward to a bullet in the back of the head.

Max wants the notebook. A foreign power wants the notebook. Smith has to hand it over or they’ll kill him. But he can’t hand it over because it’s his insurance policy. If he no longer has the notebook they’ll definitely kill him. It’s a tricky problem.

You expect double-crosses in a spy thriller but in this one it’s not just the bad guys but the good guys and even the hero planning double-crosses. And double-crosses piled on top of double-crosses.

The notebook seems to be a kind of McGuffin but the contents gradually become more significant. The contents also present Smith with more of a moral problem. He doesn’t have much in the way of ethics (his days as a British agent knocked all the idealism out of his system) but he does have some morals. He may however have to choose between mortality and survival.

This is a novel that relies more on paranoia and atmosphere than on action but there are some good action moments.

Smith is a fascinating character - he’s overweight and balding but that doesn’t mean that he’s not dangerous. Max is one of the nastiest villains in spy fiction and he’s one of the good guys. Although whether the British Secret Service in this novel can be described as good guys is very very debatable.

There are two women involved and at least one could turn out to be a femme fatale figure. Sangster is however a very fine writer and his plotting is very solid so jumping to conclusions can be a mistake.

An excellent story. Very dark, very cynical, very paranoid. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Touchfeather, the first of Sangster’s Katy Touchfeather novels, and it’s excellent.