The Quebec Analysis - A Spy Novel in 500 words
I was a child when I first heard of the Quebec Analysis. I say heard of, I invented it. A brief moment of inspiration in English Literature and there it was.
As a kid, I wrote all day, endlessly pouring out other worlds into a series of dog-eared exercise books which I bought at five for a quid from the discount stationery outlet on the light industrial estate: you know, the one near the canal. But I could never write titles until, one day, struggling in the back of Y7 EL1 it came to me. The Something Something. So many things were called The Something Something. The Maltese Falcon. The Beiderbecke affair. Like all of the best ideas, I couldn't understand how I hadn't thought of it before.
I called my story "The Quebec Analysis." It got an A. Years later, I re-used the title for my first novel. Then on we went from there. The Mumbai Incident. The St Petersburg Element. They sold pretty well. A couple were optioned for TV , every year a cheque arrived. I lived fairly happily, still in semi-obscurity, and banged them out at a rate of two per year. The Dublin Betrayal. The Berlin Distraction.
I'm not religious, but if I have a prayer it is this: Lord, preserve us from middle aged novelists with opinions. Like any white man of my age who'd constantly been told how important he was, I started to think that my opinion was necessary, desirable, a required voice in public discourse. I wrote think-pieces in the Spectator, I opined on matters of which I knew little for various newspapers, I even, God help me, went on Question Time(Making the mistake of reading Twitter afterwards).
It was this which first embroiled me in the surprisingly tedious world of international espionage. I’d said that I was shortly due at a Literary festival in the capital of one of the newer ex-Soviet republics, the president’s attempt to apply a little culture to wash away the sins of the past. It was a sizeable appearance fee and a quiet schedule. Upon returning home I discovered an email inviting me for a chat “about the nation”.
And so it was that I found myself on a watching brief at this festival, my handler (he typed, self-consciously) had instructed me in well-modulated tones to keep an eye on a fellow panellist, Jurij Kranic, a writer of absurdist fables, befriend him, have a chat. This I duly did. I found him amiable, generous and capable of holding his drink. He laughed a lot, we swapped books. I confessed to my handler that I hadn’t learned very much at all.
He smiled, and said something about how that at least they’d think that was all we’d got and I’d been a great help. Before I left, he asked if I’d sign my latest book for his wife, who was a big fan. He asked me if I’d ever thought about writing something else, comedy perhaps.
As a kid, I wrote all day, endlessly pouring out other worlds into a series of dog-eared exercise books which I bought at five for a quid from the discount stationery outlet on the light industrial estate: you know, the one near the canal. But I could never write titles until, one day, struggling in the back of Y7 EL1 it came to me. The Something Something. So many things were called The Something Something. The Maltese Falcon. The Beiderbecke affair. Like all of the best ideas, I couldn't understand how I hadn't thought of it before.
I called my story "The Quebec Analysis." It got an A. Years later, I re-used the title for my first novel. Then on we went from there. The Mumbai Incident. The St Petersburg Element. They sold pretty well. A couple were optioned for TV , every year a cheque arrived. I lived fairly happily, still in semi-obscurity, and banged them out at a rate of two per year. The Dublin Betrayal. The Berlin Distraction.
I'm not religious, but if I have a prayer it is this: Lord, preserve us from middle aged novelists with opinions. Like any white man of my age who'd constantly been told how important he was, I started to think that my opinion was necessary, desirable, a required voice in public discourse. I wrote think-pieces in the Spectator, I opined on matters of which I knew little for various newspapers, I even, God help me, went on Question Time(Making the mistake of reading Twitter afterwards).
It was this which first embroiled me in the surprisingly tedious world of international espionage. I’d said that I was shortly due at a Literary festival in the capital of one of the newer ex-Soviet republics, the president’s attempt to apply a little culture to wash away the sins of the past. It was a sizeable appearance fee and a quiet schedule. Upon returning home I discovered an email inviting me for a chat “about the nation”.
And so it was that I found myself on a watching brief at this festival, my handler (he typed, self-consciously) had instructed me in well-modulated tones to keep an eye on a fellow panellist, Jurij Kranic, a writer of absurdist fables, befriend him, have a chat. This I duly did. I found him amiable, generous and capable of holding his drink. He laughed a lot, we swapped books. I confessed to my handler that I hadn’t learned very much at all.
He smiled, and said something about how that at least they’d think that was all we’d got and I’d been a great help. Before I left, he asked if I’d sign my latest book for his wife, who was a big fan. He asked me if I’d ever thought about writing something else, comedy perhaps.
posted by Matt at 6:16 AM
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