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pe ~isliel ds certainly . |Poreign Office files: -_ i I Ak ote . , . os Bove : te Ty oofe , Fo jel eee VE. By Richa Liew ellyn, grandfather togsed away a fortune, and his own Se paged. $3,955 father spent his life paying off the family losses. N THE word of ité publisher, Richard Llew-|You meet Hamish first at Epsom, where, sym- ellyn’s new novel takes its inspiration from|bolically, he is wearing’a‘dress shirt and socks the Burgess-Maclean case, though it tums out/that need darning. ‘ that “Inspiration” isn’t the first word. that ruahes Man in the Middle to mind in connection with “M 64 c'eave."| with that much established, Mr. Llewellyn has Stil, a sort of par- planted corruption’s seed in Hamish Gleave, the middle-class Englishman caught between the aristocrats whom he resentfully envies, the la«- boring class with whom by birth and education he has nothing In common, and the parvenu British business man and his vulgar kind whom he would happily see destroyed. All in all, Hamis de @ Fine slum 48.8 Tipe paul, Now these are the materials of a complex and significant tragedy of our time, but Mr. Liewel- lyn has taken a slipshod way with them. Given + {the background and character of Hamish Gleave, * |his defection is made too easy, a matter chiefly of frustrated greed. The Communist overtures leading to his downfall are invited by a» nalveté preposterous in One whose very position makes discretion automatic, And while Mr, Llewellyn suggests in a last-minute rush that his diplomat has succumbed intellectually to the Communisc ideology, there really has been little or no prep= aration for the big betrayal. there, In Mr. Liew- tellyn’s book, as ip jthat news story ‘which startled - the j Ifree world in 1951, two--British diplo- ;mats steal away to _the Iron Curtain ‘with important se- crets lifted from ‘One of them leaves. ‘behind a wife and children. who pre- sumably will join him in the U.5.5.R, This is Hamish Gleave, a sorry specimen indeed. : ers hard to say, Richard Llewellya and perhaps it doesn’t realy matter. how spe- Imperfections cifically MED Lieweltyit had Duncan Maclean in} That leaves it a kind of disguised cloak-and« Mind when he wrote about Hamish Gleave,/dagger story, complete with a fiery femme fatale ‘There. 4s the usual disclaimer of “any resem-|luring Hamish on to his destruction, Irrelevant iblance to actus] persons, living or dead"-—butjcharacters appear and disappear. What promise that note might have crept in out of old habit.|to be important relationships remain half ex- .— The important thing here is what makes Hamie/plored, And, finally, the man who wrote “How (as his friends call him) run to the embrace of|Green Was My Valley’ and “None But the tyranny. Lonely Heart” with such’ admirable narrative Right to the point of his defection, he has|ease, is guilty of a strange muddiness here, even not formally been a Communist. He is a hard-(to the point of long passages of dialogue in.- working, underpaid, competent official in charge|which you must backtrack to discover who is of the Foreign Office’s American desk. If he/speaking, despises Americans, and smarts under English| All of which confusion may, and I suspect dependence on the dollar, he hates Communists/ddéeés, reflect Mr. Llewellyn’s uncertainty about as well. Some day he may become an ambassa-|just what he wanted to make of this, a spy story dor, but it’s a long time to wait, and in thelor the tragedy of an undermined integrity, Un- meantime he could do with some More money.jhappily, “Mr. Hamish Gleave” winds uP as He™re—uahappy when he remembers how his nelther one nor the. other aoe oe anh Shells 20 Elid! 220s. Sie ft weal Oyatl,. VD parka Peek P ets T6FEB. 8 1956 a wee Cu. —_ Boardman Bel mon Mason . Mohr Parsons Rosen Tama Nease Pincerrowd Tele, Room Holloman Wash. Post and Timeac Harald BaD Jeu Wash. News Wash. Star N. Y. Herald Tribune N.Y. Mirror N. Y. Daily News —— Daily Worker The Worker New Leader - asm l:5Uurs q ~ we a” ort _—_—— —