Prelude to Terror

Robert Renwick #1

by Helen MacInnes

New York art expert Colin Grant takes on an easy to travel to Vienna and bid on a priceless Old Master on behalf of a Texan millionaire. The painting has been smuggled out of Hungary by a defector, and Grant must get it at any cost, while keeping his employer’s name a secret. But all is not as it seems. No sooner has Grant landed in Austria than his seemingly simple assignment turns into a nightmare, as he finds himself at the centre of a conspiracy to unleash a wave of international terrorism.


Grant must now navigate a hidden and terrifying world, as he and the woman he loves become pawns in a war between the secret armies of East and West.

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Espionage, Mystery, Suspense, Mystery Thriller, Art

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Helen MacInnes was a Scottish-American author of espionage novels. She graduated from the University of Glasgow in Scotland in 1928 with a degree in French and German. A librarian, she married Professor Gilbert Highet in 1932 and moved with her husband to New York in 1937 so he could teach classics at Columbia University. She wrote her first novel, Above Suspicion, in 1939. She wrote many bestselling suspense novels and became an American citizen in 1951.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first book by MacInnes that I've read. Wow! It was clever and exciting. After the sale of the artwork, it was hard to believe we were only two-thirds through the story.

Colin Grant finally finds his niche regarding what to do with his life, especially after his bout of depression after the murder of his wife. But it is a long and winding road to that destination.

The author sums up the problem with terrorists (published in 1978!): "They came in all dimensions: groups of political fanatics with blind obedience and perverted social conscience; the trained assassin tracking down their victim in a peaceful Austrian village; a boy on a quiet Washington street killing on vicious impulse. All of them, however different they seemed, bent on destruction. All of them, however motivated, with total contempt for human life." Not much has changed, unfortunately.

I loved discovering the "good guys" from the "bad guys" and watching the novice, Colin, learn the ropes.

[Jeff Dickison · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good spy novel as art specialist gets involved in unexpected and unwanted cold war intrigue. I would have given this 4.5 stars (if I could), but I did not like the ending. Otherwise it is excellent. MacInnes was touted as the queen of spy novelists for over 40 years. She is excellent. Recommended.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this may be one of my favorite MacInnes thrillers.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

4, 4.5 stars but I'm rounding up because it's the perfect, page turning escape in the current unsettling time. MacInnes writes elegantly, her characters reflect the same elegance. You get a yarn about cold war spies filled with old-world charm, a beautifully set up grift with renaissance art, and plot, so much stealthy adventurous plot. I was up til 3 am reading last night and gave up on finishing it when I realized there was quite a bit left. I binged it again today and I didn't feel any guilt for reading a genre piece because this is so well written. I enjoy John Le Carre and MacInnes writes in the same era, but I find her characters to be more full-baked, interesting. There's definitely a lack of the verisimilitude that we get in our modern imaginings of spy-craft but I don't mind that we have big romances, a lot of coincidences and James Bond level spies that are crack shots, drive like the devil and speak multiple languages while talking knowledgeably about art. This holds together because the plot is so good. MacInnes is a master at pacing and juggles this complex pattern like the expert magician that she is and it's breathtaking and exciting. I haven't enjoyed a spook novel so much since...perhaps ever?

[Anna Richland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh this made me so FURIOUS! It is classic MacInnes in so many ways - excellent writing, tense, spot-on period and place details. And of course having terrorists poison spies in their apartment lobbies with nerve toxins isn't just for the 1960s and 70s anymore, it's still with us. So yes, read this book for a well-written thriller. Using art as a way of moving money clandestinely certainly happens (I researched this for a book of my own).

BUT THE END WILL MAKE YOU FURIOUS. No spoilers, but I knew in my gut that something was coming and I had to keep walking away from the book, getting a drink of water, taking a deep breath, convincing myself that I was overreacting, and then going back to read. So be ready.

[Jeri Stofa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very enjoyable, well written, and suspense that drew you in to try and solve the mystery

This was a very enjoyable and well written suspenseful mystery. There was never an obvious clue or easy to figure out what would develop next, except for the missing Lois... Some parts were a definitely easy to predict, but the writing of the story was so well done that this was not a deterrent to the story.

[AM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exciting, far more than the opening would lead one to think. And the chauvinist repents! The least likely of all twists. 😉

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a spy novel-y spy novel. The kind where the unsuspecting guy gets recruited for a seemingly above-board and noble business/art venture, and ends up caught between the KGB and CIA. Colin Grant is a free-lance art writer and adviser in acquisitions to a prestigious New York fine art gallery. The staff of a billionaire on whose private collection Colin had advised contacts him about traveling Vienna to bid at auction on a piece that the billionaire wanted to acquire quietly. The piece belonged to a friend who was using it to fund his escape from Hungary.

Of course Colin accepts. Immediately on his arrival in Vienna, a team of Mossad and CIA agents intercept him, and it quickly becomes clear that the mission is quite dangerous. There's a background love story, but really it's about a KGB ring that is intercepting rare works of art that are coming onto market, killing the original owners, selling the art at auction, depositing the selling price on the stolen art in a Swiss bank account to fund KGB programs, and substituting a fake for the original art so that they acquire it, too. So Colin's job is to break the cycle by figuring out which Swiss bank the money is in so they can trace it, retaining the original piece of art, and escaping alive. He's smart and handsome, so it must turn out all right in the end...right?

[Liz Lund · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is set in Europe in the World War II era. Mrs. McInnes writes real thrillers. Spy methods are ancient, but she brings people and events into your heart. I really enjoy her books. I can read them several times and still enjoy them.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like Helen MacInnes (espionage books). This book was not one of my favorites of hers, but still well done.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! A real thriller.

[Teri-K · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not one of her best, I thought this dragged in the middle. I think the hero just wasn't interesting enough to carry the story.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

AGH

Helen MacInnes is the perfect comfort read. Idk, somehow nothing relaxes me more than sitting curled up, practically shaking with tension, waiting for something to go wrong because I know it's going to but please Grant, please Avril, please everyone, don't die. Please?

This book was already falling apart when I got it and I tried to turn the pages gently, I really did, but they're kind of dropping off now...
Somebody really loved this book before me. And I don't blame them.

It's not, personally, my favorite MacInnes. For one thing, that annoying romance and those annooyyyying chapters of Inner Romantic Turmoil. At least that section was brief? Also, respect. For how that one thing turned out. Because the author Went There. And ow my heart.
Also, I gotta say, respect for the originality of the thing. Spy novels can fall into some pretty predictable patterns, and while this one did that, it also didn't. I mean...it felt like a quintessential spy novel, but also things happened not how I expected them to and not when I expected them to? Yeah. It was tense.

So, I think the plotting was extra good, while the characters were just a little subpar. Not very much, mind you - Grant can't compete with the likes of Hearne or anything, but I did eventually warm up to our cranky, grieving art-critic protagonist. Avril was sort of underdeveloped (underdeveloped love interests - what an unheard-of problem), but sort of cool and definitely believable. I loved that she knew so many languages. Renwick was a flat stereotype, but a likeable flat stereotype. Poor Lois Westerbrook; I didn't like her, but...poor, poor thing. Oh, and FRANK. Frank was new (by which I mean I don't recall his type appearing in every other spy novel ever). Israeli agent, aggressively competent, kinda...doesn't get that whole "being gentle with others' feelings," "tact" thing. I loved Frank, and his friendship with Renwick was delightful. I don't know that I'd like Frank in real life...but I like him a whole lot in book form.

Incidentally, I wish book characters would behave according to my personal standards of morality? That would be really nice. I say this without hope, but it would be really nice. Maybe for my birthday sometime?

Not-so-incidentally, I'm going to be really sad when I run out of Helen MacInnes novels to read. Rereads are great and all, but nothing's quite the same as getting lost for the first time in the unknown twists and turns of a really excellently-written espionage story.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many years ago, I read several novels by Helen MacInnes. I really enjoyed them and was pleased when a friend recently leant me Prelude to Terror. However, I was slightly disappointed with this book.

There were times when the plot seemed to unravel and it didn't interest me enough to need to read at every opportunity. I also felt no real empathy for the characters. I don't think I'll be revisiting this author again soon, although I know she still has a considerable following.

[Kati · Rating 2 out of 5]

Prelude to Terror shows it's age. Characters exist, but there's nothing special about them. The plot made me nostalgic for the 80s. The last 70 pages felt like it was the only exciting part of the book.

[Biggus · Rating 1 out of 5]

40% in and 100% over it, with approximately 0% interest in proceeding.

[Eden Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Visit JetBlackDragonfly (The Man Who Read Too Much) at www.edenthompson.ca/blog

Helen MacInnes is deservedly known as the Queen of Spy Writers. Writing from 1941 until 1983, just before her death is 1985, her stories of espionage and innocents being caught up in the web of political intrigue are as timeless as a Hitchcock thriller. You can easily imagine casting the films with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, Gene Hackman and Lois Chiles, or Michael Fassbinder and Juliette Binoche, as the leads - depending on the decade.

In Prelude To Terror, art dealer Colin Grant has the opportunity to travel to Vienna to purchase a masterwork at auction. His buyer will remain anonymous. Meeting him at the airport is a driver who greets/diverts him, and he is suddenly caught between two groups: Avril Hoffman and Robert Renwick (NATO?) and Gene Marck and the mysterious Lois Westerbrook (of unknown allegiance?). Shuffled into a network of underground spies and co-opted by both sides, he manages to maintain balance in a world where no one is what they seem, where the smiling face of a new friend conceals the revolver about to strike. There are so many characters with dual roles, you really begin to wonder who is on our heroes side, and who will make it out alive, right up to the final pages. All involved wish to complete the sham auction - for Grant to fill the coffers of the Nazis with fresh funds, while legally smuggling out assumed priceless artworks. MacInnes builds the tension to a high point at the halfway mark, then introduces a finale built on intrigue and hand to hand justice.

A winner all round, MacInnes is consistently solid and Prelude to Terror is not an exception. Her thrillers are built on intelligence and the mystery of what is not said - complex plots with consistent interest. Her two books following this one (The Hidden Target and Cloak of Darkness) also feature Robert Renwick.

My copy was from the Titan Books series of reprints (all with uniformly clever covers), which unfortunately contained many printing errors: Four times a period was used in the middle of a sentence where a comma belonged, three times a set of quotation marks was missing its mate, once a period in the middle of a sentence for unknown reason, and an obvious spelling error on page 133. As a careful reader, these jump off the page, as I wonder who did the proofreading, and what will be discovered as I read the rest of the series.

[Shoshana Hathaway · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prelude to terror DB 13635
MacInnes, Helen. Reading time 10 hours, 40 minutes.

This is a polished, intelligent thriller, which reminded me more than a little of the work of John Le Carre, my very favorite espionage author. While the writing doesn’t quite meet his gold standard, it is extremely good; descriptive when appropriate, creating scenes that have depth, color and texture which provide the perfect staging for her action. The writing can be terse and direct, especially in action scenes, which give just enough information and move the reader along with the story, sometimes at breakneck speed.

The plot is as convoluted as any really good espionage story should be …with agents, double agents, triple agents and innocents all maneuvering in old Vienna, as fertile ground for spies and spying as any other city in Europe ever was. Everyone is watching and listening to everyone else, and plots abound.

While the characters aren’t spectacularly developed, they are well drawn, and I found it easy to identify with the main characters and detest and hope for the complete ruin of others. One of my pet peeves, though, is the non-professional who becomes involved in espionage …and is better at it than the professionals. This was the case in this book, but the author stayed just short of making this hero entirely unbelievable, giving him *just* enough background and native intelligence and skill to pull it all off fairly well.

The narration was more than competent, even skillful, and the narrator had no problems with the foreign (German, French, and occasionally Italian and Russian) names and phrases. All in all, I found this an enjoyable engaging read, and while not life changing or great literature, will certainly provide several hours of excellent entertainment.

Shoshana

[Barry Martin Vass · Rating 5 out of 5]

During her lifetime, Scottish Author Helen MacInnes wrote a series of espionage thrillers that were so well-researched that they seemed almost real. Consider: her first novel, Above Suspicion, about a young British couple who travel to the continent to locate a missing anti-Nazi agent in 1939, was immediately made into a movie as World War II threatened. Her second novel, Assignment in Brittany, was so realistic that it quickly became required reading for Allied intelligence officers. Her 1944 novel, The Unconquerable, which was an extremely accurate portrayal of the Polish resistance effort, had some reviewers questioning whether she was getting classified material from her husband, who was a member of MI6. The truth was somewhat less suspicious: she and her husband took yearly vacations in Europe as the Nazis came to power; over the years, she took copious notes and had many long discussions with her husband about what was going on. In this novel, Colin Grant is an art appraiser working in New York City when he is approached by a former colleague with an interesting proposition: would he be interested in taking an all-expenses paid vacation to Vienna to appraise and purchase a seventeenth-century painting? And make a nice fee while doing it? Sounds like an easy decision, doesn't it? This is set during the Cold War, when Soviet agents and sleeper cells were wreaking havoc throughout Europe, and Author MacInnes, having traveled there many times, knows the people and the customs so well that she is able to make the narrative crackle with immediacy. And as Grant sinks deeper and deeper into a web of spies and deception, you will buy into this story big-time, so much so that you will find yourself holding your breath at times to see how he gets himself out of it. Good suspense, deftly told.

[Elia Giordano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il libro in sé mi è piaciuto molto, il racconto abbastanza originale ed interessante. Non mi è piaciuto molto lo stile narrativo, che personalmente mi ha spesso e volentieri spiazzato e/o lasciato in stato confusionale costringendomi a tornare indietro di qualche riga (o addirittura paragrafo) per dare una seconda lettura che mi permettesse di capire ciò che mi ero perso, ovvero legami tra botta e risposta o commistioni tra dialoghi diretti, pensieri dei personaggi e sezioni descrittive "esterne" a questi ultimi. Ho poi trovato nella traduzione italiana delle vere "falle" sintattiche e grammaticali, talvolta dei sintagmi che in lingua italiana semplicemente non esistono oppure dei costrutti privi di coerenza grammaticale. Non so se siano solo meri "errori" di traduzione oppure proprio strascichi del testo in lingua originale.

Detto ciò, come detto inizialmente, il racconto mi è piaciuto, la trama alquanto intricata e ricca di interessanti aspetti, dallo spionaggio ai sentimenti e le emozioni dei vari personaggi; non mancano i colpi di scena né i momenti di suspence.
Nel complesso la narrazione procede senza mai annoiare con capitoli o sezioni troppo descrittivi.
Le 4 stelle, oltre ai motivi sopra esposti riguardo al ritmo di narrazione, sono dovute anche al titolo che invero, fin da prima che iniziassi a leggere il romanzo, ho immaginato fosse del tutto inappropriato e, azzardo, fuori luogo. Ovviamente non posso esternarne le motivazioni per non svelare contenuti della trama. Chi lo leggerà (o l'avrà già letto) penso converrà con me su questo particolare.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Colin Grant, an art expert in New York, is commissioned to travel to Vienna to bid on a painting by Dutch landscape artist Ruysdael on behalf of a millionaire art collector in Texas. As one would expect from MacInnes, the assignment turns out not to be as easy as expected. KGB terrorists are financing their activities by selling paintings from Iron Curtain countries, and Grant gets caught up between the terrorists and a group headed by Robert Renwick, a NATO intelligence officer, who hope to uncover and reveal the terrorists’ activities. I’ve read other MacInnes books I’ve liked much better, mostly those she wrote earlier in her career.

[Bailey Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This came out on Audible recently, and when I happened to look up Helen MacInnes out of curiosity I found that it was included in the audible member library (sadly, only temporarily). I have the 1978 yellow cover edition of this book, which I read years ago and didn't remember, so I decided to give the audio a listen.

Helen MacInnes is one of the greats, up there with Robert Ludlum and Eric Ambler and Vince Flynn. However, like those authors and pretty much everyone else, she was definitely of her time. Reading this was, in some ways, like a time capsule to a period in our social history that seems hard to fathom today. From the rampant and seemingly unconscious sexism to airline tickets being delivered to hotels by courier, the story was, in some ways, a striking illustration of how much things have changed in less than 50 years.

Sheesh! I'm glad I wasn't part of that world! Although popular culture seems to look fondly at many aspects of life/fashion in those days, reading this book in 2024 served as an accidental reminder that the 1970s sucked.

It's also amazing how much the structural and stylistic conventions of novel writing in general, and spy-thriller writing in particular, have changed.

- This is a long-form, complex, multi-faceted story. Even though it does seem to fit a 3-act structure, it's long. 400 single-spaced 12-point pages in print. Roughly double what I would expect from a spy-thriller in the early 2020s. It seems like the market in 1978 wanted the novel equivalent of a full length feature film, whereas today the market seems to like streaming episodes in 30 minute bites.

- The chapters are long and fully fleshed out. Current writing fashion seems to have a fixation on paring every sentence, paragraph, and scene to the absolute minimum number of words and ideas needed to convey the absolute minimum amount of grammatically coherent meaning to tell a story in other than bullet-summary form. Not so in 1978. Oh no! Let's have a tour of the hotel, a description of the mountains, and a complete rundown of what everyone is wearing and how they do their hair! This aspect was actually refreshing. Modern spy-thrillers, in contrast, tend to be presented in brief, episodic chapters that are more like little mini-vignettes than fully fleshed out scenes, sometimes to the detriment of immersion and learning.

- Head hopping. Oh, my goodness. I guess expectations were different, and tastes have evolved. Ms. MacInnes clearly felt no compulsion to stick with a close third-person POV. We're bouncing around in multiple heads all the time, in a sort of sometimes omniscient, sometimes intimately close third-person narrative. It generally wasn't confusing, but sometimes it was.

- Cars, guns, and gear: These were described with sufficient specificity to inform the imagination and lend flavor/glamor to the story, no more. There was a black Fiat, a Citroen, an old brown Porsche. There was a shotgun, and a rifle, and a 22 automatic with a suppressor (and the small caliber was a factor in the story). This was a positive difference from 2020's spy thrillers that go into such forensic micro-detail about every spec and brand name of every piece of gear that they've got everything short of a buy-it-now link. We should get back to this style for cars, guns and gear.

- Social details that, in the 2020s, seem far less important. For example, it seems that in the 1970s, how you groomed yourself and whether your clothes fit properly were major indicators of social and economic status. This was before the mass-commoditization of manufactured textiles made well-fitted clothing so ubiquitous that we all gave up on dressing well and even billionaires started shlepping around in sweatpants and hoodies. Which means, from a story point of view, that descriptions of dress and grooming habits are also descriptions of status and character, carrying a weight back in 1978 that they wouldn't carry today. It was interesting, in an anthropological sort of way, but it didn't convince me to tuck in my shirt.

- The portrayal of women (and, more broadly, of heteronormativity). Holy crap. All the women in this story were either matrons or hotties, and all of them were in constant menial service to men: making coffee for men, making meals for men, doing laundry for men, following orders from men. When a woman falls in love with the male protagonist, it's never even in question for one millisecond that she would do anything other than quit her career as a professional intelligence officer to follow said man halfway across the world to be his wife-servant, which is all the funnier because said man doesn't even have a steady job. The gender role myopia was, frankly, bizarre and unsettling, especially coming from a female author.

In MacInnes's defense, she wrote commercial fiction to sell books and make money, not as a social activist. There is no reason to assume anything about MacInnes's personal views from these books. In fact, had she portrayed women differently, there's a good chance her publisher would have refused to print it.

So, aside from some truly cringe moments and, lets face it, a few tropes that today are so tired they lie gasping like goldfish knocked over in the historical fiction aisle, this was a fun, well written and exciting story that kept me interested. 5-stars for it's time period, because it would be unfair to hold this book up to modern values and expectations. Today, this would be (rightly) unpublishable.

Let's all be glad it's not the 70s.

[Judio · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second time I'm reading this one. When I registered it on Goodreads last year, I gave it a 3, mainly because I had forgotten the story (but knew I'd liked it) which I'd read around 1993. I've just re-read it and am giving it a 4.

This is another brilliant espionage thriller from Helen MacInnes. I've just been reminded once again why I love her books.

[Edward Creter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boring in spots, but even the boring parts have some fascination in them. Colin Grant, an art dealer wrapped up in espionage, is a very human character with a very big temper. You never know when he'll explode or when he keeps cool. I kinda like this book.

[Gena Lott · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title is a little bit misleading, but like MacInnes's other books that I have read, it is full of suspense and thrills. I really liked the plot and the story-line is interesting as it deals with the art world and espionage.

[Janette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as exciting or interesting as other MacInnes' books, probably 3 1/2 stars instead of 4. Nice to read something exciting that doesn't have iPhones or new technology....she never has needed it in her books!

[Faith Weldon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has been around for a while. The plot includes murder, intrigue, kidnapping and smuggling. It's a page turner and a good read for a trip or the summer.

[Helaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was published in 1978--we get so used to iphones, blackberries, laptops, that s thriller without them seems contrived and bland.

[Stacey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Chose this for my book club's birthday challenge. Followed the 100-page rule but just couldn't get into it.

[Sheila]

Colin Grant helps solve are crimes in Vienna