Lulu in Marrakech [Paperback]

Espionage, threats of terrorism and a romantic relationship collide in Lulu in Marrakech, a cross-cultural exercise in tolerance and diversity. The main protagonist Lulu Sawyer is an American "human intelligence" officer sent by her handler Sefton Taft to the Moroccan city, ostensibly to track whether someone with Western connections is cooperating with or running the Islamists to send money through charities to various terrorist organizations. But Lulu also wants to reconnect personally with her wealthy British lover Ian. The sudden onset of this kaleidoscopic place with it's strange and beguiling treatment of women, and the machinations of various foreigners eventually thrusts Lulu into some of the most compromising circumstances.

It is the destruction of Ian's factory building, leased to a manufacture of fertilizer that jump-starts Lulu's investigations and leads her to realize that perhaps her beloved Ian is not an innocent party as she first thought. The fire only increases the chatter, and the certainty that something might happen. The metaphorical significance of the flames, "like lurid colors of purple," the force engulfing the Englishman's building causes Lulu to almost faint with anxiety. If the fire wasn't an accident, what did it mean or portend? The incident provides a wake-up call, forcing Lulu to ask how much has been orchestrated, and how much might be the collusion of unforeseen events.

In a world where people - especially women - hide in baggy robes and veils, author Diane Johnson peppers her story with an unlikely smorgasbord of both Western and Arabic characters: The gangly but useless British laureate poet, Robin Crumley and his pregnant wife Posy, "a sturdy girl with the English ankles," whose greatest achievement is the study or arcane topics like water imagery in Moroccan poetry; Gazi and Khaled Al-Sayad - a Western educated Saudi couple with Gazi's traditional veil hiding hints of Khaled's abuse, but both proud of their ability to mingle and be accepted among Westerners as if there were nothing odd about them; Marina Cotter and her effusive husband with her decisive British upper-class tones and their sense of entitlement; Tom Drill and his partner Strand who runs a tea shop in the center of the City; and Suma, the woman in the black chador whose brother, Amid, a French Algerian is perhaps mixed up in something illicit and is the current subject of surveillance.

All of these people mired in a retro form of political correctness even as Lulu acts as a type of cipher wandering the alleys of the souk sometimes with Posy while she attends dinner parties and luncheons and begins to understand even more about the limitations of her situation, a woman alone, caught between the demands of her mission and her intimacies with Ian. Meanwhile, Ian seems content to entertain in his old grand house, the personification of "lordly colonial master," always powerful and preoccupied, and often disinterested. Lulu finds herself more deeply committed to Ian than ever, but part of her essential dilemma is that she's not prepared to forget her personal history with him, even as she ends up being stupefied by her own deficient powers of observation and the power of her hopes to drown out common sense.

Subplots involving infidelity and hints of treachery circle around the main theme of love's misunderstandings, which "thrives on stolen moments" and the inevitable complications of Lulu's Moroccan intrigues. Strangely, the book starts out strong, the exotic sites, sounds and smells of Marrakesh - and Lulu's reaction to it - a veritable feast for the senses. The spy sections, however, come across as a bit limp and uninspiring, the social of realities of Arabic women, and their attitudes to sex proving to be far more interesting than anything else that springs forth. As a field agent, Lulu has to be analyst enough to know what to report in the first place and what to take seriously, and what to fear. How much has been orchestrated, how much is "the collusion of unforeseen events." He real mission, however is one where she must overcome this idea of clinging to beauty and sincerity, particularly of the sexual act as she comes to acknowledge that perhaps Ian doesn't love her after all. Mike Leonard December 08.

Lulu Sawyer must surely be one of the most unlikely and unbelievable of CIA agents. She's already done an assignment in Kosovo where she met Ian Drumm, a businessman who just happens to own a property near Marrakech. Her cover story - of being the rather lazy dilettante girlfriend of this wealthy man - is supposed to put her in a position to investigate how money is being channelled from wealthy donors into the coffers of terrorist groups. Quite how she (or the CIA) envisage that a life of sitting by the pool drinking cocktails and going shopping is going to open up insights into the world of terrorism is unclear - to me, to Lulu or even it would seem to the local intelligence agencies. What is believable though is that she's really rather good at being a rather lazy dilettante girlfriend of a wealthy man. Perhaps a bit too good at it - what's her job and what's real life? Just because you've got your spy kit and ciphers doesn't make you a spy.

The book is filled with unlikely people, most of them charicatures. Staying at boyfriend Ian's compound in the middle of nowhere she finds an English poet (described by Johnson as a `laureate poet' which suggests she doesn't know what that means) called Robin and his heavily pregnant posh English wife Posy who either went to Oxford of Cambridge. The trouble is that Lulu wasn't really paying attention and can't remember which it was - and it wouldn't be rude to ask. Lulu love, you're supposed to be a spy. You can't even retain a teensy bit of factual information. Artists on sabbaticals come and go, whilst Ian's chief assistant/servant Rashid is roped in to drive Lulu and Posy back and forth to the city for cocktails and shopping. Friends drop by for performances of Shakespeare and drinks parties but it's all a bit vague about who they are and how they come to be there, but those questions just aren't asked. Come on Lulu, aren't you just the littlest bit curious? Almost every character is a cliché - the British are bumbling snobs, the French are sophisticated and well-dressed snobs, the Americans are black and gay. It's like Johnson bought the whole lot from central casting.

Outside the compound there are some other potentially colourful characters - an English lord and lady Sir Neil and Lady Marina Cotter who are in need of a nursemaid for their grandchildren; Tom and Strand the fabulously gay mixed race American couple with their adopted daughter Amelie, a rich Saudi man and his very beautiful but dissatisfied Ameican-educated wife, and a French Algerian girl being rescued by a French real estate agent from a brother who wants to kill her to protect the family `honour'. As I said, these are all `potentially colourful' but Johnson leaves them poorly sketched in shades of grey.

Part of the problem with Lulu is that she doesn't seem to have the sense she was born with. If the man you love and have gone to live with gave you your own room, wouldn't you suspect that the relationship wasn't entirely `normal'? When the same man is having surreptitious meetings with the wife of another man, would your first assumption be that they must be planning the husband's birthday party? She's supposed to be a trained intelligence officer but that's the problem with Lulu, she's just not very intelligent. You'd have to conclude that Lulu probably spent her time in her CIA training sessions filing her nails or thinking about what to make for dinner.

Johnson uses the book as an opportunity to rail against perceived injustices whilst failing to spot that Lulu's activities are not entirely whiter than white. We get an interesting insight into how to go about getting a virginity test at the doctors (thanks, but I didn't feel that much wiser - other than learning how to fake it) and a lot of pontificating about injustice but next thing you know, she and a bunch of other agents are planning a `rendition' mission with tragic consequences. Mind you, Lulu probably thinks `rendition' is what you do round the piano at a dinner party.

Lulu in Marrakech is a book that doesn't seem to have worked out what it's trying to be and consequently fails to be much of anything. I can only hope that one adventure for Lulu will prove to be enough and that Johnson isn't planning on sending this ludicrous sleuth off on any further missions. Lulu's not fit to stroke Blofeld's cat let alone call herself a spy.

"This spy-come-love story is tedious .... From her other books, it's clear the author knows a lot about Paris but that's obviously not the case with Marrakech. It just doesn't ring true. Perhaps she was trying to emulate The Spy Wore Silk, a real-life spy story about Morocco."