Prelude to Terror

This one of three MacInnes novels featuring Robert Renwick as the hero. They are best read in order: PRELUDE TO TERROR, THE HIDDEN TARGET, and then CLOAK OF DARKNESS. Almost all of MacInnes's novels were about the struggle against either Nazism or Communism, but in this novel the focus begins to shift more towards international terrorism. While Renwick (a NATO intelligence officer looking into the connection between the Soviets and terrorism) is a major figure in the novel, the central hero is that MacInnes specialty, an amateur who just stumbles into a dangerous situation and accepts it as his patriotic duty to play the role the professionals ask of him. As always in a MacInnes novel, there is also a love interest. In this case she is an agent working for Renwick, and she falls for the amateur hero as hard as he falls for her. But love and freedom are never safe in a MacInnes novel.... Unlike the usual focus of a spy novel (secrets or perhaps the identity of the spy), the focus in this story is the money trail leading from the old enemies of the west to the new enemies of the west, the terrorists. But other than that it's a typical MacInnes spy novel of Americans in Europe.

Helen McInnes would have been about 94 years old this year. I wonder what she would have thought about the events of September 11th? This thought has been going through my mind a lot lately as I remember the trilogy that she wrote in the late 1970's and early 1980's. That trilogy includes the titles: Prelude to Terror, The Hidden Target and Cloak of Darkness. These are books that I have read, re-read, and thought about a number of times. (In fact, I even wrote a "fan letter" to Ms. McInnes some years ago, commenting on her excellent main character, Robert Renwick. She sent me a postcard!) The subject of all of these books is world terrorism, yes, fictional for storytelling purposes, but stories that are so well-crafted and so highly literate that they are still relevant and readable today. In some ways the plots of the books even echo recent events, for unfortunately terrorism is not new to the world scene. Those three books and Ride a Pale Horse were written at the end of Ms. McInnes' long and distinguished career and perhaps are most relevant today, however most of her books (in spite of changes in the world political scene) are still very readable and in many ways, educational.Helen McInnes is and will remain one of my favorite authors of the international intrigue genre.