Macdonell, A.G. The Crew of the Anaconda.

Read Macdonell's espionage thriller for its engrossing contemporary descriptions of London at the very outbreak of the Second World War. Set in late August / early September 1939, the work is very much in the tradition of a classic John Buchan page-turner (perhaps along the lines of The 39 Steps) as it follows the attempts of a mismatched couple (Denis Halloran's a sort of modern day pirate and Florinda Smedley is a British counter-intelligence agent) to track down a spy embedded in Whitehall (site of Britain's Foreign Office). The nautical tie in? Well, the spy is transmitting top secret convoy information of such importance to Germany that it appears the Reich's First World War goal of blockading Britain by sea will become a reality before 1939 comes to a close. And a blockaded Britain will be a defeated Britain - so our couple, working with several secondary characters, must first locate and then capture the spy (who turns out ultimately to be a female "nonentity," a stenographic secretary named Miss Hartropp). MacDonell's writing is brisk and mordantly humorous, with Denis and Florinda written as a British Nick and Nora Charles (sans the booze). And included among the baddies are a number of American hoodlums with names right out of Damon Runyan (such as Dutch Dopey, Spider Morgan and Quickly Quickly Carey) imported over to Britain to do dirty work for the Reich. The novel's climax takes place off the east coast of England, with the hero and his "world's fastest" motor yacht (heavily armed, it can supposedly travel at 60-70 knots) taking on a U-boat sent over to extract Nazi spy Hartropp. Suffice to say, U-boat and spy are ultimately dispatched to their various Valhallas and Britain's convoy system saved for the moment. It should be noted just how prescient author MacDonell was about the importance of the convoy system to Britain's effort during World War 2. And the very real danger that he (and others) foresaw in terms of the U-boat "blockade" menace nearly became a reality in 1942 (the year after he died) before the Allies, slowly at first, beat back the Nazi U-boat wolfpacks.