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Red Anger
Adrian Gurney, a young English clerk posing as a Romanian refugee, and Alwyn Rory, an ex-security officer falsely accused of treason, are pursued throughout England by British, American, and Soviet agents
- GenresMystery
214 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
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29 people want to read
About the author
Geoffrey Household
96 books88 followersBritish author of mostly thrillers, though among 37 books he also published children's fiction. Household's flight-and-chase novels, which show the influence of John Buchan, were often narrated in the first person by a gentleman-adventurer. Among his best-know works is' Rogue Male' (1939), a suggestive story of a hunter who becomes the hunted, in 1941 filmed by Fritz Lang as 'Man Hunt'. Household's fast-paced story foreshadowed such international bestsellers as Richard Condon's thriller 'The Manchurian Candidate' (1959), Frederick Forsyth's 'The Day of the Jackal' (1971), and Ken Follett's 'Eye of the Needle' (1978) .
In 1922 Household received his B.A. in English from Magdalen College, Oxford, and between 1922 and 1935 worked in commerce abroad, moving to the US in 1929. During World War II, Household served in the Intelligence Corps in Romania and the Middle East. After the War he lived the life of a country gentleman and wrote. In his later years, he lived in Charlton, near Banbury, Oxfordshire, and died in Wardington.
Household also published an autobiography, 'Against the Wind' (1958), and several collections of short stories, which he himself considered his best work.
In 1922 Household received his B.A. in English from Magdalen College, Oxford, and between 1922 and 1935 worked in commerce abroad, moving to the US in 1929. During World War II, Household served in the Intelligence Corps in Romania and the Middle East. After the War he lived the life of a country gentleman and wrote. In his later years, he lived in Charlton, near Banbury, Oxfordshire, and died in Wardington.
Household also published an autobiography, 'Against the Wind' (1958), and several collections of short stories, which he himself considered his best work.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 9, 2013
I love Geoffrey Household, but I have to say this is not one of his more compelling works. The problem is that the logic that has his characters slinking around the countryside doing the things we read a Household novel for-- the going to earth to escape pursuit, the stratagems to outwit the relentless hunters-- is as easy to follow as a Capablanca vs. Fine chess match. Household gives us good reasons why the KGB, the CIA and MI5 are all looking for the two protagonists, but the reasons are so involved that after a while we cease to care. "No word betrayed the fact that he knew they were both working for the KGB." Uh, OK. But if you can't follow the reasoning, you can at least enjoy Household's love affair with the English countryside.
July 2, 2024
Red Anger is a real treat, and a must for thriller readers who enjoy John Buchan, Dornford Yates, and David Morrell.
My only hesitation with the novel was my own initial confusion, caused by the two protagonists being surnamed Adrian Gurney and Alwyn Rory. That was just too fine a distinction for eyes and ears and brain grasp at first.
Adrian is our young narrator, and his picaresque tale of a falling out with a shady employer, the decision to fake his own death, and to return to the UK as a Romanian defector, fills up the first third of the novel with a lot of spy versus spy hijinks. Naturally, Adrian falls afoul of every security service in Europe except MI5 with this scam. In London he is reluctantly recruited as a contract agent for the Romanian security services. They want to know the whereabouts of presume defector Alwyn Rory, so as to trump their KGB bête noires.
Alwyn is assumed by MI5 to already be living in Moscow.
But as Adrian retraces Alwyn's biography, he is led to American Eudora Hilliard, who raised him. Eudora was a Stalinist activist during the Spanish Civil War, now retired to South Devon at a house called Cleder’s Priory in the village of Molesworthy. Eudora Hilliard is the dynamo that energizes Adrian, and Red Anger itself.
Eudora has already proleptically set the scene, as writer of Red Anger's prefatory letter to Adrian; this letter also establishes the novel's theme:
I have of course an ulterior motive in allowing or persuading you to drag this unsavoury business out into the light. You will have read the daily revelations of arrogance, dishonesty and contempt for Law in departments of our government, leaving us without even the illusion that there is honour among thieves. We in America are going through one of our periodical revolutions when we clean out the stables more thoroughly than any other country would ever dare. Because I know that, my pride in my country is unaffected. But now is the time to drive home the lesson that the end never justifies the means.
Once you Dora and Adrian become more comfortable with each other, and her exasperation with the security services and their manhunt for Alwyn explodes, she lays out her values for the young narrator:
‘But me!’ she exclaimed. ‘Still little violent Eudora, the scourge of Wall Street and the FBI! Willie, let’s sell my story to the papers! I was Stalin’s Mistress—how’s that for a title? What would they think of it here in Devon?’
‘The joke of the century if it wasn’t for Alwyn. But as it is …’
‘As it is, you press a button in the White House and up comes some smirking, fat-bellied bloodhound with a gun in his pants and Eudora’s file all alone on a tea trolley. Willie, listen to me! Sometimes my Puritan ancestors speak through me! In my day America was terrified lest the masses should be corrupted by communism. And what has happened? It’s not the masses but the governing class which has been corrupted. The lying of the State—straight from Russia! Conform or be suspected—straight from Russia! The end justifies any means. That’s an old one, but where did the CIA get it from? Straight from Russia, and the KGB at that! The threat—well, it exists all right, but you meet it proudly with the morals of long civilisation not with those of the scum of the earth. By God, they are worse than Franco! I’ll bet you that if I went back to Spain he’d ask me to a party and talk horses with me like a Christian gentleman and wouldn’t even have me, searched before I came in.’
I was left gasping by this tirade. If that was the fire and splendour of Eudora’s youth, there must have been a whole cabinet of files on her, not one.
‘And has it occurred to you,’ she went on, ‘that my Kill-a-Commie-for-Christ compatriots will have found out by this afternoon that you were not the nineteenth century farmer you pretended to be, which wouldn’t have taken in anyone except a nice, clean American boy or some bloody fascist from Surbiton recruited to throw the money around with a nice, clean English accent?’
‘You think they won’t believe him, Mrs. Hilliard?’
‘I am quite sure of it, Willie. That gang of arrogant thugs is efficient and somebody is talking to the real owner of those bullocks right now. I have to get Alwyn away in broad daylight. And by the grace of God the South Devon Agricultural Show is tomorrow!’
* * *
Red Anger is not a cold war potboiler. In fact, Adrian and Alwyn are united first and foremost by love of their home ground. For Adrian, the "presence" of terrain, its shape and the chain-links of its history, inspire deep reverence. This is particularly evident in his description of the Marlborough Downs, where he grew up, and the Wansdyke, an ancient earthwork that serves as a hiding place for him and Alwyn:
The next day took us through the lovely Dorset country by Beaminster and Cattistock. It was a Sunday and distant church bells continued to praise the gift of life even if there was no longer much of a congregation underneath them. We found it hard to remember that we were hunted men.
Coming down into Cerne Abbas, the Giant faced us—that nobly phallic demi-god cut in the chalk. It was new to us both and started me off with memories of the Marlborough Downs where we were going, bare except for the whispering grass and the tombs, temples, forts and ditches which so affected my boy’s sense of the continuity of our land.
‘Not melancholy?’ Alwyn asked.
‘Not to me or my father. They were our friends and ancestors. He used to say that if we felt their presence in our time, it was sacred.’
‘Presences. Yes. Closed, dark, the silence of the tide bring¬ing presences more mindless than yours. Adrian, those weeks in the derelict were hell. There was no coming out of the tomb for me except sometimes to talk to Eudora.’
On the penultimate day of their partnership as fugitives, Adrian and Alwyn get boxed-in on the Ridge Way by a car filled with picnickers who may be KGB. Again the countryside is underscored, this time twinned with "red anger" itself:
We ourselves moved a little further uphill and lay down on the outer side of the opposite bank, our heads high enough to see the bottom but well concealed behind seedlings of elder. Alwyn was tense as an animal uncertain whether to charge, his nostrils slightly flared and quivering. I had seen that expression before—for example, when I invaded his privacy at the birthday hut.
‘Beer and the sword do leave presences, Willie,’ he said.
‘Yes? I could do with some beer.’
‘You will have that tomorrow.’
I remember that he said ‘you’ not ‘we’. At the time I saw no special meaning in it.
‘He left red anger behind.’
‘Who did?’
‘Do I know? I only feel. Isn’t that what you meant by a presence? He fought berserk in Woden’s Ditch. It was his land, not theirs.’
I suppose the red anger had mounted up in him—against himself during those weeks in the darkness of the derelict when he must have wondered whether he should not come out of hiding and challenge his fate, win or lose. Now in his mind as well were the images of our journey through the fairest, calmest counties of England until we came to my hills where the first of us cut terraces for their corn and knew their home for a home, building for the gods and honouring their dead. So all the afternoon since the meeting with Marghiloman he must have been dreaming of revenge. But revenge is the wrong word. He was not that sort of man. I would call it protest—the ultimate and only protest against two gangs of infidel trespassers.
‘He was without hope as I am, Willie. His sword will not be hard to get. Lie still where you are and never move! Watch and remember and drink my health in the beer tomorrow!’
* * *
Red Anger begins in plot-heavy rigamarole. Household never reveals all his connections at the start, though a dedicated reader of, say, Lee Child might find the lack of chapters and the single point of view taxing. I did. But Household establishes a growing number of doublings and reverses to elicit enjoyment.
Jay
2 July 2024
My only hesitation with the novel was my own initial confusion, caused by the two protagonists being surnamed Adrian Gurney and Alwyn Rory. That was just too fine a distinction for eyes and ears and brain grasp at first.
Adrian is our young narrator, and his picaresque tale of a falling out with a shady employer, the decision to fake his own death, and to return to the UK as a Romanian defector, fills up the first third of the novel with a lot of spy versus spy hijinks. Naturally, Adrian falls afoul of every security service in Europe except MI5 with this scam. In London he is reluctantly recruited as a contract agent for the Romanian security services. They want to know the whereabouts of presume defector Alwyn Rory, so as to trump their KGB bête noires.
Alwyn is assumed by MI5 to already be living in Moscow.
But as Adrian retraces Alwyn's biography, he is led to American Eudora Hilliard, who raised him. Eudora was a Stalinist activist during the Spanish Civil War, now retired to South Devon at a house called Cleder’s Priory in the village of Molesworthy. Eudora Hilliard is the dynamo that energizes Adrian, and Red Anger itself.
Eudora has already proleptically set the scene, as writer of Red Anger's prefatory letter to Adrian; this letter also establishes the novel's theme:
I have of course an ulterior motive in allowing or persuading you to drag this unsavoury business out into the light. You will have read the daily revelations of arrogance, dishonesty and contempt for Law in departments of our government, leaving us without even the illusion that there is honour among thieves. We in America are going through one of our periodical revolutions when we clean out the stables more thoroughly than any other country would ever dare. Because I know that, my pride in my country is unaffected. But now is the time to drive home the lesson that the end never justifies the means.
Once you Dora and Adrian become more comfortable with each other, and her exasperation with the security services and their manhunt for Alwyn explodes, she lays out her values for the young narrator:
‘But me!’ she exclaimed. ‘Still little violent Eudora, the scourge of Wall Street and the FBI! Willie, let’s sell my story to the papers! I was Stalin’s Mistress—how’s that for a title? What would they think of it here in Devon?’
‘The joke of the century if it wasn’t for Alwyn. But as it is …’
‘As it is, you press a button in the White House and up comes some smirking, fat-bellied bloodhound with a gun in his pants and Eudora’s file all alone on a tea trolley. Willie, listen to me! Sometimes my Puritan ancestors speak through me! In my day America was terrified lest the masses should be corrupted by communism. And what has happened? It’s not the masses but the governing class which has been corrupted. The lying of the State—straight from Russia! Conform or be suspected—straight from Russia! The end justifies any means. That’s an old one, but where did the CIA get it from? Straight from Russia, and the KGB at that! The threat—well, it exists all right, but you meet it proudly with the morals of long civilisation not with those of the scum of the earth. By God, they are worse than Franco! I’ll bet you that if I went back to Spain he’d ask me to a party and talk horses with me like a Christian gentleman and wouldn’t even have me, searched before I came in.’
I was left gasping by this tirade. If that was the fire and splendour of Eudora’s youth, there must have been a whole cabinet of files on her, not one.
‘And has it occurred to you,’ she went on, ‘that my Kill-a-Commie-for-Christ compatriots will have found out by this afternoon that you were not the nineteenth century farmer you pretended to be, which wouldn’t have taken in anyone except a nice, clean American boy or some bloody fascist from Surbiton recruited to throw the money around with a nice, clean English accent?’
‘You think they won’t believe him, Mrs. Hilliard?’
‘I am quite sure of it, Willie. That gang of arrogant thugs is efficient and somebody is talking to the real owner of those bullocks right now. I have to get Alwyn away in broad daylight. And by the grace of God the South Devon Agricultural Show is tomorrow!’
* * *
Red Anger is not a cold war potboiler. In fact, Adrian and Alwyn are united first and foremost by love of their home ground. For Adrian, the "presence" of terrain, its shape and the chain-links of its history, inspire deep reverence. This is particularly evident in his description of the Marlborough Downs, where he grew up, and the Wansdyke, an ancient earthwork that serves as a hiding place for him and Alwyn:
The next day took us through the lovely Dorset country by Beaminster and Cattistock. It was a Sunday and distant church bells continued to praise the gift of life even if there was no longer much of a congregation underneath them. We found it hard to remember that we were hunted men.
Coming down into Cerne Abbas, the Giant faced us—that nobly phallic demi-god cut in the chalk. It was new to us both and started me off with memories of the Marlborough Downs where we were going, bare except for the whispering grass and the tombs, temples, forts and ditches which so affected my boy’s sense of the continuity of our land.
‘Not melancholy?’ Alwyn asked.
‘Not to me or my father. They were our friends and ancestors. He used to say that if we felt their presence in our time, it was sacred.’
‘Presences. Yes. Closed, dark, the silence of the tide bring¬ing presences more mindless than yours. Adrian, those weeks in the derelict were hell. There was no coming out of the tomb for me except sometimes to talk to Eudora.’
On the penultimate day of their partnership as fugitives, Adrian and Alwyn get boxed-in on the Ridge Way by a car filled with picnickers who may be KGB. Again the countryside is underscored, this time twinned with "red anger" itself:
We ourselves moved a little further uphill and lay down on the outer side of the opposite bank, our heads high enough to see the bottom but well concealed behind seedlings of elder. Alwyn was tense as an animal uncertain whether to charge, his nostrils slightly flared and quivering. I had seen that expression before—for example, when I invaded his privacy at the birthday hut.
‘Beer and the sword do leave presences, Willie,’ he said.
‘Yes? I could do with some beer.’
‘You will have that tomorrow.’
I remember that he said ‘you’ not ‘we’. At the time I saw no special meaning in it.
‘He left red anger behind.’
‘Who did?’
‘Do I know? I only feel. Isn’t that what you meant by a presence? He fought berserk in Woden’s Ditch. It was his land, not theirs.’
I suppose the red anger had mounted up in him—against himself during those weeks in the darkness of the derelict when he must have wondered whether he should not come out of hiding and challenge his fate, win or lose. Now in his mind as well were the images of our journey through the fairest, calmest counties of England until we came to my hills where the first of us cut terraces for their corn and knew their home for a home, building for the gods and honouring their dead. So all the afternoon since the meeting with Marghiloman he must have been dreaming of revenge. But revenge is the wrong word. He was not that sort of man. I would call it protest—the ultimate and only protest against two gangs of infidel trespassers.
‘He was without hope as I am, Willie. His sword will not be hard to get. Lie still where you are and never move! Watch and remember and drink my health in the beer tomorrow!’
* * *
Red Anger begins in plot-heavy rigamarole. Household never reveals all his connections at the start, though a dedicated reader of, say, Lee Child might find the lack of chapters and the single point of view taxing. I did. But Household establishes a growing number of doublings and reverses to elicit enjoyment.
Jay
2 July 2024
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 17, 2021
Bizarre and confusing thriller which treats the English countryside as a roundabout for hired cars. One gets the impression that Household had by this time become tired of the fact that his work was divided into two categories - Rogue Male and all the rest, and he decided to satirise his most successful novel. It didn't work but it was an interesting try.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews