Venetian Blind (novel): Difference between revisions

From Citizendium
Jump to navigation Jump to search
imported>Hayford Peirce
(publishers full name)
imported>Hayford Peirce
(rewrote the lede -- its really not a standard suspense novel)
Line 4: Line 4:
{{Authors|Hayford Peirce|others=y}}
{{Authors|Hayford Peirce|others=y}}


'''Venetian Blind''' is a 1959 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 second of 21 books involving his protagonist [[Colonel Charles Russell]], the head of the unobtrusive but lethal Security Executive, a government counter-intelligence agency. Like most of the other works by Haggard and some by his near contemporaries [[Victor Canning]] and [[Michael Gilbert]], it is both a standard novel of suspense and a semi-political thriller about the reactions of those in high government positions who scent potential danger to their own political standing from the on-going events of the novel.
'''Venetian Blind''' is a 1959 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 second of 21 books involving his protagonist [[Colonel Charles Russell]], the head of the unobtrusive but lethal Security Executive, a government counter-intelligence agency. Like many of Haggard's books it has both standard elements of suspense and an almost [[Henry James|Henry Jamiesian]] exposition of British [[Establishment]] mores and character, in both the government and upper-class financiers, scientists, industrialists, and their families.
   
   
==Plot==
==Plot==

Revision as of 15:44, 30 September 2020

This article is developed but not approved.
Main Article
Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
This editable, developed Main Article is subject to a disclaimer.
(CC) Photo: Clayton Evans
William Haggard on the back cover of The Conspirators, 1967
Authors [about]:
Hayford Peirce and others.
CZ is an open collaboration. Please
join in to develop this article!

Venetian Blind is a 1959 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 second of 21 books involving his protagonist Colonel Charles Russell, the head of the unobtrusive but lethal Security Executive, a government counter-intelligence agency. Like many of Haggard's books it has both standard elements of suspense and an almost Henry Jamiesian exposition of British Establishment mores and character, in both the government and upper-class financiers, scientists, industrialists, and their families.

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."[1]

References

  1. From the back flap of the dust jacket of the Walker and Company American edition of The Conspirators, New York, 1967