The Antagonists (Haggard novel)

(CC) Photo: Clayton Evans
William Haggard on the back cover of The Conspirators, 1967

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The Antagonists is a 1964 suspense novel by the British author William Haggard published in England by Cassell and in the United States by Ives Washburn. It was Haggard's sixth of 21 books involving his protagonist Colonel Charles Russell, the urbane head of the unobtrusive but lethal Security Executive, a government counter-intelligence agency clearly based on the actual MI5 or Security Service, where he moves easily and gracefully along C.P. Snow's Corridors of Power in Whitehall. Like Haggard's earlier books it has standard elements of suspense thrillers along with detailed examinations of character, but in this case with more scenes of direct action and somewhat less dissection of character and motivation than in the first three books.

Plot

Protagonist is perhaps too strong a word to describe Colonel Russell. As Haggard himself wrote about his fiction:

My novels are chiefly novels of suspense with a background of international politics. A Colonel Charles Russell of the Security Executive, a not entirely imaginary British counter-espionage organization, while not a protagonist in the technical sense, holds the story line together in the background by his operations, while the characters in the foreground carry the action."

Reception and/or Appraisal

Reviews were very favorable:

The New York Times wrote: There is no suspense author whom I read more slowly than I do William Haggard. I hate to miss the least nuance of his intricate constructions of plots and ploys and power‐plays, as delicate, and as deadly as a spider's web. In THE ANTAGONISTS (Washburn, 53.50), the web is woven around a great Yugoslav scientist in England, who is wanted (varyingly dead or alive) by Russian agents, two factions of Americans and several factions of his own countrymen—a situation which calls for all the peace‐keeping dexterity of Col. Charles Russell of the Security Executive. This is the modern novel of political intrigue at its subtlest and most fascinating.

Kirkus Reviews wrote: Col. Charles Russell, last seen in The High Wire, is a scrupulous spy who does not care to employ methods that England's enemies and allies occasionally stoop to. "We musn't be caught out cheating," his supervisor tells him and, reluctantly, he takes his elegant gloves off and gets into the fray surrounding Gorjan, a top level scientist from an iron curtain country that everybody would like to keep. Mr. Haggard supplies an expert atmosphere of watching for his spies and an active conclusion for the likable Col. Russell who prefers to play fair but knows how to play rough.

There is no suspense author whom I read more slowly than I do William Haggard. I hate to miss the least nuance of his intricate constructions of plots and ploys and power‐plays, as delicate, and as deadly as a spider's web. In THE ANTAGONISTS (Washburn, 53.50), the web is woven around a great Yugoslav scientist in England, who is wanted (varyingly dead or alive) by Russian agents, two factions of Americans and several factions of his own countrymen—a situation which calls for all the peace‐keeping dexterity of Col. Charles Russell of the Security Executive. This is the modern novel of political intrigue at its subtlest and most fascinating. (Last year's comparably good “The High Wire” is now out in a Signet paperback, 50 cents.)

https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/30/archives/criminals-at-large.html?searchResultPosition=2

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1964/08/30/119441118.html?pageNumber=118 Anthony Boucher