Jack Higgins' Paul Chavasse: A Cold War Spy

This is the first two parts of a three part series about Harry Patterson’s Paul Chavasse novels, published in the 1960s by Abelard-Schuman and John Long.  The first two parts are an introduction to the character, and the third part is an analysis of the six titles to feature Paul Chavasse.  This essay was originally posted July 2, 2012.

Paul Chavasse:  An Introduction to the Cold War Spy Story

I.       Introduction

The 1960s were a decade of espionage—both in cold war machinations of super power maneuvering and popular fiction.  The popular front of the adventure spy story started when it was made public President John F. Kennedy enjoyed Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.  According to the JFK Presidential Library and Museum website, Allen Dulles, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, stated:

“‘Jacqueline Kennedy gave her husband his first James Bond book (probably From Russia, with Love).’  Dulles then began to buy other books, and sent them to John F. Kennedy.”

Ian Fleming’s work became a sensation, hitting the major bestseller lists and, in the decades since, becoming a pop culture icon; spawning a myriad of films and, after Fleming’s death, attracting authors great and small to continue the Bond series.  While the James Bond series is the most well known of the adventure spy genre, it is far from the best.  The most striking of its contemporaries was Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm novels—a series first appearing in 1960 with Death of a Citizen, and totaling 27 titles in its three decade run.  

In industry, and publishing is no different, when a commercial strike is made—in this case the rise of Fleming from midlist writer to bestselling phenomenon—a host of copycat products are rushed to market.  One of the many spy novels published in the wake of Fleming’s success was a slim volume published by Abelard-Schuman, a British publisher, in 1962 titled The Testament of Caspar Schultz (Testament).  The name on the copy was Martin Fallon, which was a pseudonym for a young Harry Patterson. 

The name Martin Fallon and Harry Patterson have a long and successful history.  Martin Fallon was used for the protagonist of two separate novels—the first was an early title, Cry of the Hunter, which was published in 1962 under Patterson’s own name, and the second was A Prayer for the Dying published in 1973 as by Jack Higgins.  Mr. Patterson has a tendency to repeat himself, and he did something very similar to the two incarnations of Martin Fallon: He killed both.  The novels are both very good, but A Prayer for the Dying is one of Patterson’s best.

II.    Chavasse

Testament featured a stark and hard protagonist named Paul Chavasse.  Chavasse was a former academic who caught the eye of Mallory, the boss of a British espionage agency answerable to the Prime Minister called “The Bureau,” when he helped a friend escape from Communist Czechoslovakia.  Mallory, known as “The Chief,” offered Chavasse a job while he was in hospital recovering from his wounds.  The Bureau is headquartered in an old house in St. John’s Wood—on a polished brass plate next to its main door is inscribed “Brown & Company – Importer’s & Exporter’s”.

Paul Chavasse is a recognizable character to readers of Harry Patterson; educated, exotic—he was derived from a Breton father and British mother—cynical in a romantic sort of way, and tired of the game he can’t, or really doesn’t want, to leave.  Chavasse’s personal life is not really explored in the novels; however, a paragraph from Testament summarizes his early life, in order to explain his French name—

“My father was a lawyer in Paris, but my mother was English.  He was an officer in the reserve—killed at Arras when the Panzers broke through in 1940.  I was only eleven at the time.  My mother and I came out through Dunkirk.”

The novels are serious adventure stories, but there is some humor.  Enough that it seems Patterson likely had a great time writing the Paul Chavasse novels.  An early scene in Testament finds The Chief explaining why Chavasse can’t have some much needed time off.  When Chavasse asks about two specific agents—Wilson and LaCosta—Mallory responds that Wilson is presumed dead in Ankara, and LaCosta—

“…cracked up after the affair in Cuba.  I’ve put him into the home for six months….I’m afraid we shan’t be able to use LaCosta again.”

Another example is a line from the 2001 edition of The Keys of Hell, where two characters are speaking of Chavasse’s excessive skill as a linguist, “He speaks more languages than you’ve had hot dinners.”

The Bureau is set up similarly to that of Fleming’s MI6.  The Chief is over the top and larger than life, and very, very British, and his private secretary, Jean Frazer, is all curves and someone Chavasse quite enjoys looking at—

“She was wearing a plain white blouse and tweed skirt of deceptively simple cut that moulded her round hips.  His eyes followed her approvingly as she walked across the room to her desk and sat down.” 

While his eyes are appreciative, Chavasse is anything but a womanizer, and his relationship with Jean Frazer is that of a friend.  Chavasse, like most of Patterson’s protagonists, has a romanticized view of women, which is often both a strength and weakness, but it always lends itself to the character’s loneliness—he is an outsider, isolated from a society that depends on his work to survive, and often a gentleman people look upon as fallen far below his stature. 

Chavasse always gets the job done and he does it with a complex mixture of larger than life exploit and human frailty; a mixture and style only Harry Patterson can routinely employ successfully.  It is atmosphere, dialogue and action.  When in top form Patterson can tell a character’s story with the singularity of the way he smokes a cigarette, stirs his drink, or looks at a woman.  The six novels to feature Paul Chavasse are a step below Patterson’s best work, but only just.

Part III.  Novels

1.  The Testament of Caspar Schultz (1962)
2.  Year of the Tiger (1963)
3.  The Keys of Hell (1965)
4.  Midnight Never Comes (1966)
5.  Dark Side of the Street (1967)

To be continued...

THE KEYS OF HELL by Jack Higgins

This is the fourth part of an essay about the six novels Jack Higgins wrote featuring Paul Chavasse titled "Paul Chavasse: An Introduction to the Cold War Spy Story".  The novels were written throughout the 1960s, and owe much to both the James Bond and Matt Helm novels.  The novels were published as by Martin Fallon, and before you read this post, you should read the first two segments of the essay here and here and here to put this post in context.

The Keys of Hell was published in the U. K. by Abelard-Schumann in 1965, while it made its U. S. debut as a Fawcett Gold Medal paperback (1-3673-6) in the 1970s.  It appeared in the United States after The Eagle Has Landed made Patterson a bestseller, with an attractive cover painting by Gordon Johnson.  It was reissued, in similar fashion to Year of the Tiger, by Berkley as a paperback in 2001.  The Berkley edition included two additional chapters; one at the opening and one at the end.  This time Chavasse is in 1995 Manhattan, and is presented with a case study of his exploits in 1965 Albania.  The inclusion of the introductory chapter is more successful in Keys, and it includes a humorous piece of dialogue, which explains both Patterson’s writing style and Paul Chavasse perfectly—

“‘This man is what?  Half English, half French.  He speaks more languages than you’ve had hot dinners.  University degrees coming out of his ears.  In spite of all that, a killer by nature.’” 

Keys was my introduction to Paul Chavasse and I have a soft spot for it.  It opens in Milan, Italy—Chavasse has freshly returned from an assignment in Albania, where he was reconnoitering the anticommunist underground, which is more or less defunct, since the sigurmi has swept it up.  After he briefs The Chief he is given an assignment to take care of a double agent, and then he is ordered to take a three week holiday.  A few days into his vacation Chavasse is lured, without sanction from The Bureau, back to Albania to recover the Black Madonna, a religious icon a Catholic group attempted to smuggle out of the country, and the communist Albanian government wants destroyed. 

Chavasse garners the help of an Italian smuggler named Guilio Orsini to make a quick run into the marshy delta of the Buene River in Northern Albania, where a small launch reportedly carrying the Madonna was sunk by the Albanian Navy.  They plan a quick in and out trip, but when they arrive the Albanian’s are waiting.  Chavasse is quickly alone—his party all captured—on the sparsely populated Albanian coast.  It doesn’t take him long to find a few friendly natives, and a way into the ancient castle his friends are being held.  It also doesn’t take long for him to end up in one of the cells, and it takes Chavasse’s patented mixture of violence and wit to find his way out again.

Keys is one of the shorter Paul Chavasse novels—it runs well shy of 50,000 words—but it is one of the more illuminating regarding the character of Paul Chavasse.  He is portrayed as something close to an antihero.  He has always been a man of extreme violence, but his violence has seemingly been manifested in his struggle against tyranny.  However, in a single line of dialogue, Chavasse turns his motives from a soldier of democracy to something very close to a thug—

“‘If I’d been born in Germany twenty years earlier, I’d probably have ended up in the Gestapo.’”

This development of Chavasse as something short of a heroic character is a significant development in both Paul Chavasse as a character and Harry Patterson as a writer.  Patterson has always had a tendency to create protagonists that fall far short of their perceived station in life—an educated gentleman who chooses violence over a refined life—but they are rarely simple thugs who enjoy violence for violence.  This separation of Chavasse as a run of the mill protagonist is a mile post in Patterson’s development as a writer.  This treatment of Paul Chavasse as a violent semi-thug is a marked difference from the Paul Chavasse portrayed in The Testament of Caspar Schultz. 

The revised edition of Keys is the first novel to introduce Chavasse as “Sir Paul Chavasse.”  It introduces his birth date, Paris, 1928, his education:  Sorbonne, Cambridge, and Harvard.  He is identified as a Third Secretary of The Bureau, and Smirnoff is his favorite vodka.    

YEAR OF THE TIGER by Jack Higgins

Signet Edition

This is the third part of an essay about the six novels Jack Higgins wrote featuring Paul Chavasse titled "Paul Chavasse: An Introduction to the Cold War Spy Story".  The novels were written throughout the 1960s, and owe much to both the James Bond and Matt Helm novels.  The novels were published as by Martin Fallon, and before you read this post, you should read the first two segments of the essay here and here to put this post in context.

Year of the Tiger made its debut in 1963.  It was published by Abelard-Schumann in the U. K., but to my knowledge it is the only novel featuring Paul Chavasse, which was never published in the United States in its original form.  It was released in 1996 by Berkley as a paperback in an updated version—Patterson added chapters, one at the beginning and one at the end, which featured Chavasse as The Bureau Chief in 1995 London and presented the story as a reminisce. 

While I haven’t seen the original edition, the style of the writing and the plotline indicate it unlikely other significant changes were made.  It has a far flung plot that features a new type of energy for space travel, a rescue mission to Tibet, Chinese communists and an alluring Tibetan woman. 

Chavasse, after his participation in the safe passage of the Dalai Lama from Tibet in 1959, is assigned to infiltrate Tibet and escort a British missionary named Dr Karl Hoffner safely out of the country.  Dr Hoffner has developed a mathematical theory, which would allow for “space to be twisted…until it becomes an energy field.”  While the Chinese are unaware of Hoffner’s recent success with his decades old theory, the British Government is alerted by one of Hoffner’s oldest friends, and it wants him, and his theory, back in the West. 

Berkley Edition

Harper Edition

The story moves quickly from London to Tibet; Chavasse is smuggled across the Indian border and assumes the identity of a Soviet journalist writing a story about Hoffner.  The game turns sour, however, and Chavasse finds himself in the local Chinese garrison’s stockade—a predicament he is often in throughout the series.  It takes Chavasse’s usual mixture of wit and muscle, and a little help from friendly locals, to get out of the jam.  Then he is forced to collect Hoffner, with the game blown, and smuggle him across the high mountains of Tibet, with a platoon of Chinese Army regulars on his trail, to freedom.

Year of the Tiger is probably the weakest of the Paul Chavasse novels, but it still has the same presence and entertainment value as the others in the series.  Not to mention it has all the hallmarks of early Jack Higgins—it is quick, spirited, heavy with a stark and meaningful atmosphere, and really, really fun.

THE TESTAMENT OF CASPAR SCHULTZ by Jack Higgins

Fawcett Gold Medal

This is the second part of an essay about the six novels Jack Higgins wrote featuring Paul Chavasse titled "Paul Chavasse: An Introduction to the Cold War Spy Story".  The novels were written throughout the 1960s, and owe much to both the James Bond and Matt Helm novels.  The novels were published as by Martin Fallon, and before you read this post, you should read the first segment of the essay here to put this post in context.

 

The first, and one of the better to feature Paul Chavasse, was originally titled The Testament of Caspar Schultz.  It was published in the U. K. as a hardcover with a limited print run by Abelard-Schuman in 1962, and made its U. S. debut—in a strikingly brilliant silver cover—as a Fawcett Gold Medal paperback (13963-8).  It features a straight forward plot.  A high ranking Nazi named Caspar Schultz has written his memoirs.  It is reputed to be an expose of German and British power brokers sympathetic to the fascist regime, including the man who was to act as the Reich’s Quisling after the successful German invasion of England.  

Schultz’s aide is shopping the manuscript to publishers, and makes the mistake of enquiring a German publisher with fascist sympathies.  The Nazi underground is quickly on his trail, with the goal of destroying both Schultz and the manuscript.  The Bureau is brought into the chase when a British publisher is approached to publish the manuscript and Chavasse is enlisted to meet Schultz’s aide and arrange to acquire the manuscript.

Harper Collins

It is a seemingly simple job, but Chavasse is ambushed on the train he is to meet the aide, and he spends the rest of the story trying to catch up with events.  On the way he meets two Israeli spies tracking Schultz as a war criminal, a bevy of heavies from the underground Nazi movement, an unexpected romance—the only he is to enjoy over the entire series—a friendly German Secret Service agent, and a surprising betrayal. 

Testament is the most personal of the Chavasse novels.  It shows Chavasse as something approaching a cynical romantic.  While in Germany he meets an Israeli agent, Anna Hartmann, and he is immediately smitten.  The two make plans to leave the game, but as nothing happens as it should, Paul Chavasse ends the novel in the same place it opened—alone.        

Berkley

Testament was republished as The Bormann Testament in 2006.  The only noticeable change is the Nazi leader morphs from Caspar Schultz to Martin Bormann, which is explained in a brief Foreword as the original title, but due to perceived legal implications it was changed from the real life Martin Bormann to the fictional Caspar Schultz.  The assertion that Schultz was originally intended to be Bormann is supported by an early passage that describes Bormann’s failed attempt to escape Berlin in a tank.  Bormann was never conclusively found after the war; however, it is widely believed he committed suicide outside a railway station on May 2, 1945.