Brother Cain

by Simon Raven

Expelled from school, advised to leave university, and forced to resign from the army, Captain Jacinth Crewe has precious few options open to him. For a man in his position, an approach to join a sinister British Government security organisation, with a training centre in Rome, is not an opportunity to be turned down. In Rome, he learns fast how to be ruthless. There is one final mission to complete his training however – to kill an American diplomat and his wife. The setting for the final test is Venice, the occasion, a New Year’s Eve costume ball. As the clock nears midnight, the choice has to be made. And there is no turning back. ‘Compulsive’ – Daily Telegraph

Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Simon Arthur Noël Raven (28 December 1927 – 12 May 2001) was an English novelist, essayist, dramatist and raconteur who, in a writing career of forty years, caused controversy, amusement and offence. His obituary in The Guardian noted that, "he combined elements of Flashman, Waugh's Captain Grimes and the Earl of Rochester", and that he reminded Noel Annan, his Cambridge tutor, of the young Guy Burgess.

Among the many things said about him, perhaps the most quoted was that he had "the mind of a cad and the pen of an angel". E W Swanton called Raven's cricket memoir Shadows on the Grass "the filthiest cricket book ever written". He has also been called "cynical" and "cold-blooded", his characters "guaranteed to behave badly under pressure; most of them are vile without any pressure at all". His unashamed credo was "a robust eighteenth-century paganism....allied to a deep contempt for the egalitarian code of post-war England"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_R...

Reviews

[J. Kent Messum · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a novel that broke the mold. It's a story about the early days of covert operations, as ill-defined as the people and organizations that carried them out. Disgraced Captain Jacinth Crewe is discharged from the British Army burdened with gambling debts and a lost sense of self. He is soon brought into the fold of an 'institute' that recognizes his skill set and flexible morals. By all appearances he is a promising candidate for their staff, so they make him an offer and begin putting him through their trials.

Simon Raven is one of those great writers who sadly got lost in the shuffle for the most part. What he wrote, and the time he wrote it, resulted in him and his works getting banned or labelled with an X-certificate. If you read 'Brother Cain' now, you'll say to yourself "What was all the fuss about? I've read far more racy stuff, and I've encountered this type of story a dozen times."

What you have to remember is that Simon Raven was one of the originators of all the dangerous-themed stuff you enjoy today. Brother Cain was written in 1959, and at the time Raven wasn't just pushing the envelope, he was tearing it at all four corners. This novel marches through territory where other authors feared to tread. It tackles corruption, espionage, morality (and lack thereof), bisexuality, murder, incest, and the stone cold heart at the center of covert affairs.

The writing is fantastic, with one drawback; it feels considerably dated. It's done in an older style, more robust (sometimes far too much) with long outdated language. A few parts even seem antiquated and clash with the pace and mood, softening the impact of a story that otherwise has a lot of punch. Occasionally it hammers points home with it's repetitive and heavy-handed nature, but again, this has to do with the times and the fact that the material was fresh and censor-worthy back then. It's also apparent that this author was miles ahead of the rest.

If you're into classic fiction, Simon Raven is a must read. 'Brother Cain' is a fine place to start.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the 28th and final volume of Raven's fiction for me to read, in a deep dive that began back in January. I actually treated myself to a rather pricey first edition hardcover of this to commemorate the event! I also have some volumes of his non-fiction, which I may or may not read sometime further on...

Anyway, this was Raven's second novel to be published, back in 1959. By that time, seven of Ian Fleming's James Bond books had successfully arrived, and it is evident that Raven - by his publisher's suggestion or his own volition - was attempting to emulate them with this. There are a couple of sly nods to such: the femme fatale in this is named Eurydice Lynd - and her counterpart in Casino Royale was called Vesper Lynd. And at one point the arch villain introduces himself as 'Boyd ... Ivan Boyd.' :-)

Taking place at the start of the cold war, the plot involves one of Raven's typical upper-class wastrels, one Jacinth Crewe, who has been dismissed from both university and the military (for such 'naughty' miscreances as gambling debts and pederasty!), and subsequently taken in hand by something just known as 'the institute', a murky British intelligence operation attempting to quash communism.

The fast-paced novel then details Crewe's training to undertake some dark operations in pursuit of such, culminating - after some surprising and NOT so surprising twists and turns - in a masked ball on New Year's Eve in Venice, at which he is allegedly to assassinate an American diplomat. It's all a bunch of larky nonsense, but it does get the job done, with Raven's usual wit and wisdom.

So, we come to the end of our Raven journey - as they say, what a long, strange trip it's been! Avanti!

[Artie LeBlanc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best of Raven's works, it is slow to get going.
Remarkably little sense of place, despite the setting of much of the book in Italy - it's almost as if, back in 1959, the author felt that the sheer mention of an Overseas Place would be sufficient.