The Ministry of Fear

Graham Greene was a very talented and prolific twentieth century writer, perhaps best known for his novels The End of the Affair and the Third Man, both of which were made into successful films. Many of his books explore the struggle of modern man or woman to make moral choices in a complex and often corrupt world. He also liked to write thrillers, which he called "entertainments" to distinguish them from what he considered his more serious novels. Greene's thriller The Ministry of Fear certainly is entertaining. Greene pulls out all the stops in this story of Arthur Rowe, a middle aged, disillusioned man with a sordid past who stumbles into a real mystery when he wins a cake in a raffle at a seedy charity fair. From the moment he claims his cake made with "real eggs" (real eggs were a true delicacy during the London Blitz!), Rowe becomes a marked man. He is followed, threatened, attacked, betrayed, imprisoned, and nearly blown up. Through it all he tries to figure out what mysterious message is connected with the cake. Does it all point to a devious plot to threaten the allied cause and his beloved England? Because Greene is such a first class writer, he can't write a story that doesn't have some deeper subtext about good and evil, or create a hero who doesn't engage and interest us. We cannot help but care about what happens to Arthur Rowe. Greene keeps us guessing until the very end about whom Rowe should trust. When we remember that The Ministry of Fear was written during the war when no one knew which side would ultimately triumph, this novel of espionage and moral choices packs an even more potent punch. Espionage writers come and go, but you will have to look hard to find a writer more engaging, effective, and ,yes, entertaining than Graham Greene.

Arthur Rowe, a retired journalist, is the unlikely winner of a cake, the weight of which he correctly guessed during a charity fête patronized by The Free Mothers. For Rowe, the fête should have been an innocent trip back to childhood and innocence, a welcome chance to escape the terror of the Blitz and to forget twenty years of his past as a murderer. Instead he becomes a haunted man because he possesses a cake which was destined for somebody else. It turns out that the cake contains some poison - hyoscine - which nearly kills an innocent man called Poole. Then Rowe is involved in a séance with Mrs Bellairs, a fortune teller, and several other people during which a man called Cost is killed with Rowe's own knife. He manages to escape with the help of Willi Hilfe, an Austrian refugee. Next Rowe is accosted by a man called Fullove who specialises in eighteenth century landscape gardening books and who asks Rowe to help him carry his heavy suitcase to the Regal Court and to leave it there in the room of a certain Travers. A page guides Rowe to Mr Travers's room where Anna, Willi Hilfe's sister, is waiting. Soon after that, Rowe and Anna open the suitcase which contains no books but a bomb which goes off... At this stage - the middle of the novel - the plot does not seem to make much sense but in the second part Mr Greene carefully assembles the pieces of the jigsaw so that by the end of the narrative the reader has a clear picture of the mystery. Reading the novel one realizes that war is like a bad dream in which familiar people appear in terrible and unlikely disguises and that nobody is to be trusted. That is the Ministry of Fear, the general atmosphere spread by the enemy so that one can't depend on a single soul. And then there is that other Ministry of Fear to which all who love belong since if one loves, one fears at the same time.

Arthur Rowe, an inhabitant of wartime London during the Blitz with a terrible secret, visits a fair one day on a lark, setting in motion a chain of events that will thrust him into a shadowy world where nobody, not even oneself, is quite what they seem. Graham Greene is an extraordinary writer, painting fully developed characters with great economy of language. He is also a master of atmosphere; I have rarely encountered an author who so skillfully develops an ambiance of fear, paranoia, and regret. This black mood and a dearth of exciting action set pieces may be the reason some reviewers question this novel's status as a thriller, but I was enthralled by the quiet dread that makes our hero's fate so uncertain. The brilliant conclusion infuses a superficially happy ending with a strong dose of tragedy.

British author Graham Greene divided his early novels into two distinct groups: `serious' novels, like "The End of the Affair," "Brighton Rock," and "The Power and the Glory"; and `entertainments,' his term for his espionage and suspense thrillers. This second group includes "A Gun for Sale" (U.S. title: "This Gun for Hire"), "Stamboul Train," "The Confidential Agent"...and "The Ministry of Fear." Looking back on Greene's long career, this distinction seems very artificial and almost silly; it perhaps made market sense back then, but Greene's entertainments are every bit as serious-minded as his non-genre work. These books are in no way lightweight time-wasters. They are as concerned with character, drama, and the human condition as any of his other books. In fact, I honestly prefer his entertainments; through the mode of the thriller, they actually stab deeper into the reader's mind."The Ministry of Fear," published in 1943 when World War II was raging in London's skies, is perhaps Greene's finest entertainment and my personal favorite of his novels. Greene produces here a quintessential noir novel using a premise we often associate with Alfred Hitchcock's films: an innocent man accidentally stumbles upon a secret that turns him into a man marked for death and hunted by the law. However, Greene's main character, Arthur Rowe, is hardly innocent. He is a solitary, lonely individual who harbors a deep guilt over a crime he committed in the past. When he speaks the wrong phrase to a fortune-teller at a fair, he suddenly finds himself the target of a shadowy group of spies in London -- the Ministry of the title. Soon he's fleeing through blitz London, framed for murder, desperate and near-suicidal, but harboring an anger toward the people who have tried to kill him.Suddenly, Greene pulls a massive plot switch on the reader. The novel makes an abrupt shift that alters the whole nature of the plot. Rowe's story becomes that of possible redemption and the washing away of past sins..but at the expense of feeling whole and complete. To say much more would ruin the surprises of the novel and the internal odyssey of the main character. It's one of the most fascinating moral and character-driven thrillers ever written. And the backdrop of war-torn London, facing daily rains of bombs, is astonishing. It's almost a fantasy world, albeit a horrific one.Greene's language can sometimes feel too exact and literary for some readers' tastes -- he certainly writes nothing like today's typical churner of bestsellers -- and his peculiar 1940s British terms may cause some head-scratching for American readers. However, Greene had a magical way of expressing ideas that anyone can relate to. He writes in flashes of truth that can make the reader shiver with realization. Only the greatest authors can do this, and Greene does it over and over again in "The Ministry of Fear." If you've only read Greene's non-genre novels, I urge you to delve into "The Ministry of Fear." It wi

Set in England during WWII, The Ministry of Fear is the story of Arthur Rowe surviving but not truly living in the shadow of what was once his life. He finds himself hunted by shadowy forces of espionage and the memory of having mercifully murdered his sick wife. Somewhat convuluted at times and not Greene's best effort, but still brilliant and heart tugging. Greene's fire always burns brightest when he speaks to the heart and not of cloak and dagger stuff.