Artillery of Lies

ARTILLERY OF LIES is the sequel to THE ELDORADO NETWORK, which was a fun little novel about a Spanish spy who goes to work selling fake intelligence reports to the Germans in the middle of the Second World War. The follow-up is marginally less fun, though still addictively readable and chock full of Robinson's trademark pitch-black humor. Luis Cabrillo, our hero, has now joined up with British MI6 and has been moved to England, where he's to continue his work for the enemy under English observation. He's discontent, stuck up in a house all day, and suffering from writer's block. His masters won't let him out of the house because they're afraid he'll get caught by real German spies; the trouble is, Luis doesn't think there are any actual German spies in England. To convince him of the danger they arrange an outing to Liverpool, complete with a cast of bogus Abwehr agents to make contact with Luis. The trouble is, the real Abwehr also wants to make contact with Luis, so they've sent over a few agents of their own to meet him in the train station in Liverpool. The result is a scene of sustained slapstick brilliance worthy of an Ealing comedy. You can almost picture Alec Guiness and Peter Sellers in the starring roles. There's a lot of activity in this book, though very little actually gets done. Both the Abwehr and MI6/MI5 are involved in spying and double-crossing: with each other, with the Russians and Americans and -- in the case of the Abwehr -- with other German intelligence groups. It would seem that the Abwehr's biggest enemy is not the Allies, but the Gestapo, who they are sure have infiltrated their operation in the UK. They send a man to Glasgow to find this mole Himmler has apparently planted, even though we the readers know that the mole is just a fictional "agent" created by Luis Cabrillo. It all gets a bit tangled and befuddling until you're not entirely sure what's going on. But it's consistently hilarious, outrageous, and exciting, and ends with a bang, confirming Mr Robinson as one of the best authors of the last forty years.