Witchfinder

by Andrew Williams

Hardcover with unclipped dust jacket in an unread condition. LW

Genres: Espionage, Audiobook, Thriller, British Literature, Fiction

480 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2019

About the author

Andrew worked as a senior producer on BBC Television's flagship current affairs programmes, Panorama and Newsnight, covering the major stories of the day. In 1997 he moved to BBC Documentaries and spent the next eleven years writing and directing television documentaries and drama documentaries for the BBC and international co-producers, including the award winning series, 'The Battle of the Atlantic'. He has written two best selling histories of the Second World War; 'The Battle of the Atlantic', and 'D-Day to Berlin'. His first novel, 'The Interrogator', was shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Thriller of the Year Award and the Ellis Peters Historical Fiction Award, and it was the Daily Mail's debut thriller of 2009. His second, 'To Kill A Tsar', was one of the Daily Mail's thrillers of 2010 and was shortlisted for The Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the Ellis Peters Award. HIs 1960's espionage thriller, Witchfinder, was one of The Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year. Set inside the British intelligence services in the weeks following the defection of master spy, Kim Philby to the Soviet Union, it tells the story of an MI5 and CIA mole hunt that spirals dangerously out of control. Andrew's latest novel, The Prime Minister's Affair, is the story of a plot to blackmail a Labour Prime Minister and bring down the British Government. The Daily Mail described Andrew 'as one of Britain's most accomplished thriller writers', and the Times Literary Supplement noted that 'if le Carré needs a successor, Williams has all the equipment for the role.'

For background to his books and more on the author, visit: http://www.andrewwilliams.tv You can follow and discuss the books with Andrew on Facebook at AndrewWilliamsbooks or follow on twitter @AWilliamswriter.

Reviews

[Gram · Rating 5 out of 5]

London 1963 and Britain's intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, are in a panic after the defections to Moscow of a ring of Soviet spies Burgess, MacLean and the latest, MI6 officer Kim Philby. In his wake, Philby has left an atmosphere of suspicion and fear. Paranoia rules and the Americans no longer trust the British. The CIA are putting pressure on their British counterparts to carry out a rigorous review to root out more traitors in their ranks.
Long serving MI6 officer, Harry Vaughan is brought back from Vienna by his boss who asks him to join two investigators - Arthur Martin and Peter Wright - who are in the thrall of the ultimate paranoiac, James Jesus Angleton, head of CIA counter intelligence. Angleton was friends with Philby when the latter worked in the USA - a fact which may have fuelled his attacks on Britain's intelligence agencies.
First target of Martin and Wright is the Deputy Director General of MI5, Graham Mitchell and countless thousands of pounds and man hours are spent trying to prove their suspicions correct. From the beginning, Harry is sceptical of the case against Mitchell and wary of the messianic fervour of the two spycatchers which has been whipped up by Angleton. The labyrinthine plot moves slowly as the investigation leads nowhere. It seems Mitchell is innocent, even though the tactics used by Martin and the Peter Wright has ruined his reputation for good. The inquiry widens to include middle ranking intelligence agents and further afield to include trade unionists, university professors and politicians; in fact anyone who may have had Communist sympathies in the 1930's is a target for the spycatchers as their investigation turns in to a Mccarthyite witch-hunt for real and imagined 'Reds under the bed'.
As Vaughan tries to keep himself and his wife Elsa out of the line of fire, the tension is ratcheted up creating an uneasy atmosphere that you can almost feel. There are also superb atmospheric descriptions of London in the mid 1960's and the characters, real and fictional, are superbly drawn. At times the story reads like a fly on the wall documentary and you have to keep reminding yourself this is fiction. That said, almost all of the characters in this book are real people who worked for MI5 and MI6 and parts of the book is based on historical fact.
If you're looking for an all action James Bond type tale, this book is not for you. Despite its length (the Kindle version is 480 pages) I found this an absolutely gripping story and didn't dare to skip a single page. Superbly written, it's one of the best espionage novels I've ever read.
Fans of John Le Carre, Alan Furst and Edward Wilson's Catesby novels will love it. Highly recommended.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is set mainly in London, during the early Sixties, when MI5 and MI6 are reeling from the defection of Kim Philby and the rumours that there are other KGB spies following on from Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Philby. Harry Vaughan is returned from Vienna to find the Service nervous, suspicious and turning on itself. There were those, like Vaughan himself, who knew the men revealed as traitors and the image of the urbane, mischievous, Burgess, seems to follow Vaughan around a London, where the political scandal of Profumo is erupting and causing even more disquiet and mistrust in the corridors of power.

However, being back in London, does have its advantages. Before long, Harry Vaughan is again pursuing the beautiful Elsa Frankl Spears; determined to make her his wife. This is preferable to the task he is given, to unearth more traitors, with the CIA pushing from the background to impose control on the British Secret Service. Indeed, even on British politics, with their suggestion that the Labour Party leader is a spy.

Vaughan has been involved in the service since the Second World War and, although he doesn’t like the way the investigation is going, he feels he needs to stay. Everyone is under suspicion and Elsa, a senior civil servant, urges him to resign as it becomes obvious that anyone can be targeted. Williams manages a complicated plot, with a huge range of characters – including real life cameos, such as Anthony Blunt and Tom Driberg. This is a character driven, literary crime novel. A really interesting read, with a great sense of the era and of events surrounding the Cambridge Five.

[Maine Colonial · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is based on the history of the self-investigation of the British security services after finding that three of their agents, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean were Soviet spies. The Americans lost confidence in their British counterparts, and paranoid CIA chief James Jesus Angleton (who had been close to Philby) was convinced that the British services--and government--were crawling with Soviet agents. Harry Vaughan is a longtime British agent, since before World War II, and he decries the viciousness of the mole/witch hunt. He has personal reasons for that, but also principled ones. The story is told from his point of view.

Nearly all of the story is set in the 1960s, and is told in a sort of diary style, as the months and years go on and the services set their suspicions on one person after another, some witchfinders acting with practically a religious zeal and an eagerness to serve Angleton and the Americans, no matter the cost. Personal relationships and careers are threatened, some ruined.

Williams does a fine job of putting Vaughan, an entirely fictional character, into a story filled with the real personalities involved at the time. The tension of the investigation and the toll it takes is contrasted with the atmosphere of swinging London and England's World Cup win in 1966.

I'm not going to call Williams a new Le Carré, but he does capture some of that sense of world weariness and personal cost that permeates Le Carré's books, as well as that ability to tell a story full of consequence yet without any bang-bang action.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Williams’s gripping spy novel is set in the years following Kim Philby’s unveiling as the ‘third man’ and subsequent escape to the Soviet Union in 1963. The British security establishment and the CIA are left reeling as the enormity of Philby’s betrayal over many years is revealed. The shock and subsequent investigations, egged on by Soviet defectors desperate to retain their usefulness to the West and by the paranoiac tendencies of James Jesus Angleton at the CIA and Peter Wright at MI5, result in both services becoming lost in a ‘wilderness of mirrors’ (in Angleton’s excellent description), where, in Wright’s words ‘defectors are false, lies are truth, truth lies, and the reflections leave you dazzled and confused’.
Witchfinder is impeccably researched, although as the author makes clear in his afterword, investigations that took the best part of eight years are compressed into three for literary effect. It’s a chilling and salutary read that says much about the paranoia and anxieties of the time, the mindset and operations of secret intelligence and security services and the impact that operating within the wilderness of mirrors has on those who work in them.

[Davidg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled my way through this book. Many years ago, I read Peter Wright’s “Spycatcher”, his dull account of his investigations in MI5 when he was convinced that everybody was a spy from the Prime Minister downwards. He wrote the book as a fit of pique as he didn’t get the pension he felt that he deserved. What I remember is his grievance at the way he had been treated and that he alone was correct in deciding who might or might not have been a Soviet agent.

This book is very much based on Wright’s book and describes the turmoil in MI5 and MI6 after Philby fled to Moscow. Believing he had been tipped off, there was a witch hunt where everybody came under suspicion. The problem I had with the book is that there is very little tension. There is no hidden mole to be revealed because there wasn’t one. The only secret is that Wright, led by the CIA, is plotting the overthrow of Harold Wilson. As a Labour PM, he had to be a Soviet agent, obviously.

Much detail and time is spent going through files and questioning and threatening suspects. In Le Carry’s hands this just builds up the tension in “Tinker, Tailor”, here it is just dull.

Disappointed.

[Elite Group · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Enjoyable Historical Spy Thriller.

London, 1963. Many MI5 and MI6 agents have switched from fighting the Nazis to a Cold War with Russia. The service is reeling from the Burgess, Maclean and Philby scandals and Harry Vaughan is thus brought back from Vienna to join two other investigators to root out any further traitors. The first target of their suspicions is the Deputy Director General of MI5, Graham Mitchell, but Harry is sceptical of the case against Mitchell. As the investigation deepens, the only certainty is that no-one is above suspicion, especially Harry Vaughan himself.

This is the author's fifth fiction novel and, like his other books, it is based on real people and events. This lends the book a thrilling authenticity and, although I haven't very often read spy stories from the 40s, 50s and 60s, I will certainly be keeping my eyes out for similar books in the future. The characters in this book are utterly persuasive, and I found myself being drawn into the early to mid-sixties, even though I wasn't even born then! Some of the spy novels I have read in the past were slow affairs, and others were too complicated, but this book speeds along at a good pace, and the story itself is very believable.

The settings were quite claustrophobic, and it is clear that the author has an excellent understanding of the machinations of the intelligence world, and he brings this to life on the pages. It is not far short of 500 pages so is probably a bit longer than I like my books to be and there were clumps of twenty pages or so where little happened but window dressing, and this is the main reason for it losing a star. I am going to read a couple of Andrew's previous books, especially "The Interrogator", as I love stories based around the Second World War.


All in all, I read most of this book in a beach hut at Sandbanks and time flew by, so I can't pay it a much higher compliment than that.

Digger95

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Opening in 1963, following the exposing of Kim Philby as a soviet spy, Witchfinder blends fact and fiction as security services on both sides of the Atlantic try to weed out any additional traitors.

The story is told through the eyes of fictional MI6 officer Harry Vaughan as he becomes part of the investigation. There’s a strong atmosphere of distrust as everyone suspects everyone else and past associations are raked over in the search for clues.

It’s a slow burner of a book, indeed until the last 20% or so the pace is positively glacial. There are a lot of real characters in here, so it helps if you have some knowledge of the Cambridge spy ring – Burgess and MacLean, Philby, Blunt – and of Peter Wright’s book Spycatcher which the government tried to suppress in the 1980s. If you’re a fan of the spy genre you’ll also spot subtle nods to le Carré dotted around the text.

There’s a good sense of the period and of the febrile atmosphere in the establishment at the time, but reading this felt like a bit of a slog.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the wake of Kim Philby's 1963 defection to Moscow, the British intelligence services, constantly challenged by their American counterparts, are tearing themselves apart in desperate attempts to root out further traitors. Brought back to London from a foreign posting, Harry Vaughn becomes part of a small working group charged with an internal investigation that soon turns into an escalating witchhunt, with suspicions turning on everyone from high level politicians to MI5's Deputy Director General, from colleagues to old friends in ever tightening circles. Noone is above suspicion - including Harry himself.

Gripping and atmospheric, this excellent spy novel keeps ratcheting up the suspense with each and every chapter.

[Clive Grewcock · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess it tells you something if you start reading a book at the start of April and keep breaking off to read other books before you finish reading it in late May. Well written in parts but clearly never totally engrossing, I think this suffers from being overly long and for repeating a lot of information, including the hook, about MI5 and MI6 and the KGB that my generation already knows.

[Gill Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great read. Historical fiction with a strong emphasis on historical fact. Intriguing links to previous books about Anthony Blunt and the espionage saga from M15 and M16. Very scathing about spycatcher Peter Wright.

[Afterwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

More of a drama-documentary type novel it's densely packed with historical information that is dramatised sometimes into quite crude scenes or runs of dialogue.
There is a strong sense of time and place. It is exceptionally well researched but the story element is not hugely satisfying without quite a bit of previously acquired in depth knowledge.
It's very readable, not a back-handed comment at all since so many writer's are unable to achieve that, but it doesn't always feel like a novel and at 450 pages it is a bit long. One thing though I found I really disliked the main character, found him to be pompous and scornful of everyone he encountered apart from endless lascivious descriptions of his wife.
I think if you know the subject well already you'll really enjoy this, if you don't it might be a bit harder.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched (as much as was allowed, for sure). Be prepared to flip back a few pages here and there...many key characters introduced quickly and all at once.

[Siân Shakespear · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book to disappear into and become subsumed by the intriguing and beguiling world of espionage. If one has an iota of interest in the issue of power and the way people - men in this instance - can wield it in the most subversive ways then this story will be an eye opener. Andrew Williams throws a bright spotlight onto the exceedingly murky and muggy world of the British Inteliligence Services which extended its long fingers right into the heart of Government in the early 1960s. As one romps through the twists and turns of spies spying on each other, with seemingly no accountability or conscience, one craves 'a good 'un', one who will sort the whole tangled web out. However one ends up questioning the very foundation of the British establishment of the time and asks oneself whether the same could happen today. This is real smokescreen and mirror stuff, recounted with great authenticity and an eye for detail, which draw the reader into this 'other world'. Storytelling at its best, Andrew Williams reveals the various hues of the characters and events via well painted scenes and a colourful narrative.

[Allan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superbly written and completely engaging book.
Witchfinder is about the Cambridge 5 spy-ring investigations that followed Kim Philby's defection in 1963. Handling facts from this fascinating chapter in British History using a framework of fiction certainly helps to understand the conflicting pressures and motivations of the major players in what is a complex political drama.
I love it when you read a book that starts you on a literary journey. Having finished Witchfinder I will revisit Spycatcher (Peter Wright) and some Chapman Pincher's books to gain a different perspective and I can explore other books by Andrew Williams.

[Gareth Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am glad that I had read Ben MacIntyre’s ‘A Spy Among Friends’ not long before reading Witchfinder. That gave me the context and an introduction to many (and there many) of the real life characters in this book. It’s perhaps not the most gripping of reads because, as the plot follows historical events, the plot tends to meander and lacks direction. Nevertheless, for one who enjoys Cold War spy novels, it is an entertaining and enjoyable read.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent account of a dark time in the Special Relationship.

An excellent account of the turbulent post war years following Kim Philby's defection. It portrays a world riven with doubt and decreit, we're even your best friend isn't.
The ensuing lunacy that beset both the US and UK's intelligence services is told from the viewpoint of one man who tries to navigate his way through the turbulence.
There are no heroes as such, just a group of highly intelligent men driven to paranoia by what might be lurking in the shadows.
Hugely recommended and a terrific read.

[Mr Graeme Gibbs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Going to give this a 3 for now.

This is le Carre esque in terms of style. It’s not flashy violence, just a tale of espionage done on files and information.

There’s a huge range of characters to manage and the plot is complicated, condensing an eight year real-life investigation down into three years.

But I enjoyed it and the narration was pretty good. I liked the world-weary style that must come from being in such a profession. A solid read if not groundbreaking

[Cecile · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good spy novel that stays close to history - and describes the atmosphere of conspiracy that existed in the British secret services following the discovery of the five double agents, including Philby and Burgess. This triggers a witch hunt that threatens to destroy the service. The second part is particularly good - as it takes a bit of time to really get going.

[Graham Archer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Witchfinder by Andrew Williams is an outstanding book. It’s a fictional account of the witch hunt for further moles in the British secret services after the defection of Kim Philby. It’s complex and intelligent, and one of my favourite books of 2019. Masterful.

[Ettore Costa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love this historical period, but this novel is too dull and uninteresting. Would not recommend. I did not finish it and I do not regret it

[MR C D ROOME · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyable spy thriller. A complex story well told. It perhaps helped that I knew some of the history already but was kept interested throughout

[Abby Loader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the main fella in this, pop off king

[Mark Dowd · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a truly excellent read. the author shows great command of the subject and period in question. State intelligence isn't just about national security, but about empire building and a naked drive for power and influence by those in intelligence services. It's a total page turner and the shifting sands of the narrative keep you in suspense about who really is sinned against, and who is sinning. 100% recommended.