The Double Image

I liked the basic plot and main characters, but the author's use of almost universal viewpoints by the characters was extremely distracting. Even in one paragraph where two characters are speaking to each other, suddenly you're "inside" the mind of both of them as they are thinking about what the other one just said. A totally unneeded practice by this famous author!

I discovered Ms. MacInnes this year. She's just great even if every book is kind of the same. That is pretty much true, of course, of most authors, especially if they are in a genre. Even the best among them like Ludlum and Le Carre write similar stuff. Most of her books feature the talented male amateur spy, the innocent if very game and capable love interest (although sometimes a spy herself), a sweet love story, highly trained and decent professional good guys and evil, loathsome baddies, one who is usually a good looking women. And it usually involves some trade craft, manhunts, European (sometimes American) locales, mountainous or hilly terrain, hiking, someone being snatched (or nearly so) and an assault on a house. Often the bad guys are doing their deeds off stage. But, however similar, I have yet to read one - and I think this was my 7th or 8th, that wasn't thoroughly enjoyable. They are detailed enough to always be different in some ways and breezy enough that you are never bored or thinking what a gratuitous or boring or mailed in chapter. Her characters may be cardboard to some degree, but all the characters have their own personalities and are talented without being super heroes or able to bed every beautiful woman, as the more modern writers have it with their heroes. Most of her books are just short of being classics (so far of those I read, I would call Assignment in Brittany a classic), but all still highly recommended. I expect that within a year or so I will have read all of them.

An outstanding novel. I think this is one of Ms. MacInnes' best novels. The two primary locations Paris and the Greek Island-Mykonos are both great settings. It also has an outstanding plot of a former nazi now linked to the KGB who in hiding in Mykonos. I have not read all of her novels. I read some in the early 1980s and have reread several including this novel recently. To me, this novel and Salzburg Connection are two of her best best post 1950 books.