M
MI5's First Spymaster
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- $1.99
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
This is the amazing true story of the real 'M', William Melville, MI5's founding father and the inspiration for Ian Flemings's character in "James Bond". Melville was one of the most influential counter-espionage figures of the twentieth century. From a tiny outfit based in Victoria Street, London, the counter-intelligence organisation that Melville lobbied the Government to create is today a household name and one of the world's leading intelligence agencies. He was perfect for the job, a velvet-gloved hardman who had run Scotland Yard's Special Branch and whose career had already taken in some of London's great crime dramas including the Jack the Ripper Investigation, countering Irish Republican terrorism, assassination attempts on Queen Victoria and anarchist bomb plots. Now, with the help of recently declassified records, family material and documents that have still not officially seen the light of day, the story of his Secret Service career - including the breaking of German spy rings prior to the outbreak of World War I - can finally be told.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
P is the literary equivalent of a cover song. Conn, a film critic and essayist, here covers Ulysses (Joyce is "St. James" in the acknowledgments), a novel that poses obvious challenges to a young writer hoping to pay homage. Technically, the talented Conn is more than proficient. His take on Ulysses is set in Manhattan on (of course) June 16, 1996. His Leopold Bloom is Benjamin Seymour, an Ivy League educated pornographer (director, actor) chafing his way through three years of celibacy in mourning for his dead true love, Penelope. Stephen Dedalus is Finn, a 10-year-old girl, who ditches her elite prep school to smoke dope, beg for change and wander the city. Conn's discursions on the porn industry and his stream-of-consciousness presentation of Manhattan through a child's stoned gaze are smart and fun to read. Scenes recounting Penelope and Benjamin's doomed relationship are at once tender and tortured, imbued with a complexity that is rare in a first-time novelist. These accomplishments are considerable, but Conn's novel is hamstrung by its slavish devotion to Ulysses. Overschematic and hyperallusive, P will be mystifying to those unfamiliar with the source material and vexing to those who know it. Such is perhaps the inevitable pitfall of tributes. One hopes that Conn will next apply his gifts to a more freewheeling project.
