The Dangle

The Dangle by Vancouver Island author, Jack Schofield, is a spy novel set in the years immediately following WWII, at the beginning of the so called “cold war” and beyond. The story begins with  Katherine LaRonge, a brilliant young classical pianist, being approached after a concert performance in London by an officer in MI6, the international branch of the British intelligence service, who informs her that she has been under surveillance for some time and that her early life has been a fiction. The woman who raised her after the death of her parents, who she thought was her grandmother, was, in fact, an agent of Soviet intelligence, posthumously decorated for her service to the communist state. By good fortune this bogus granny was an accomplished concert pianist herself and had been a caring mentor who  educated her charge, focussed more on music than ideology, a case of “Beethoven over Bolshevism”. In the eyes of MI6, however, Kate is a “Dangle”, someone who has been indoctrinated as a communist ideologue and allowed to live independently in western society as a potential asset. Told of her fabricated history by Lambert, the somewhat insensitive intelligence officer, Kate finds herself unmoored, having no idea who she is or where she came from.

Lambert, while making clear she is not legally compelled to do so, asks for her help and to report to HQ the following day. There she is interviewed by a charming man with a stutter by the name of Harold, and agrees to a role as an intelligence analyst in the Paris embassy. This will allow the British to observe and perhaps use her. Harold, by the way, also goes by the name of Kim (as in Kim Philby, the  infamous “mole” or double agent who defected into the waiting arms of the KGB years later.)  Kate, it would seem, is a confused innocent caught in a dangerous shadow world. But is she? On the plane to France, Kate meets a Canadian, Jack Campbell, who was a pilot during the war, and was shot down over France and rescued and hidden by a French resistance cell. He subsequently helped in their resistance struggle and ultimately was enabled to escape to Switzerland. Campbell is  returning to France for a reunion of the resistance cell that saved his life. A bit frosty to start with, an intimate relationship soon develops between these two and many adventures ensue in a treacherous world of competing loyalties and betrayal.

“Partly based on the experiences of a friend of the author, The Dangle incorporates real characters and situations in an entertaining and intriguingly convoluted story. Jack Schofield has led a varied and interesting life. A former bush pilot, he founded the publishing house, Coast Dog Press, based on Vancouver Island and has published a number of non-fiction books based on his own experiences as an aviator. Remarkably, written last year at the age of 97, The Dangle is his first novel. It is a well written, a fun read that gives an inside look at the devious and amoral secret world that underpinned the geopolitics of the cold war years.” – Brian Pitt