The Spy Quartet. Len Deighton. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Len Deighton
Издательство: HarperCollins
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Жанр произведения: Историческая литература
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780008116224
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DEIGHTON

       An Expensive Place to Die

      Do not disturb the President of the Republic

      except in the case of world war.

       Instructions for night duty officers

       at the Élysée Palace

      You should never beat a woman,

      not even with a flower.

       The Prophet Mohammed

      Dying in Paris is a terribly expensive

      business for a foreigner.

       Oscar Wilde

      The poem ‘May’ quoted here is from Twentieth Century Chinese Poetry, translated by Kai-yu Hsu (copyright © Kai-yu Hsu 1963) and reprinted by permission of Doubleday & Co. Inc., New York

      Contents

       Cover

       Cover designer’s note

       Title Page

       Epigraph

       Introduction

       Chapter 1

       Chapter 2

       Chapter 3

       Chapter 4

       Chapter 5

       Chapter 6

       Chapter 7

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       Chapter 24

       Chapter 25

       Chapter 26

       Chapter 27

       Chapter 28

       Chapter 29

       Chapter 30

       Chapter 31

       Chapter 32

       Chapter 33

       Chapter 34

       Chapter 35

       Chapter 36

       Chapter 37

       Chapter 38

       Chapter 39

       Chapter 40

       Footnotes

       Introduction

      France beckons to every lonely misfit, and most novelists answer to that description at some time or another. Many authors have responded to France’s call with enthusiasm; notably during those years between the two world wars when the exchange rates favoured those with US dollars, and Prohibition at home made the noble vintages of France irresistible. But most of those writers were prudent. Writing primarily for English-speaking readers they wrote stories about English-speaking people. Most of those stories were vaguely autobiographical ones about the wealthy English and American visitors with whom the writers fraternized. France provided the mountains and the Mediterranean but the French people in the stories were mostly waiters.

      Many of the resulting books were dazzling; some became classics but many of the stories could have taken place in Gloucestershire or Long Island. This was a practical restraint, but writing about France without depicting French people (however inaccurate or untypical the characterizations might be) is like eating a chocolate