The Company of Strangers (Paperback)

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Review
'Displaying once again Wilson's gifts for atmospheric depiction of place, this ambitious experiment is streets ahead of most other thrillers' John Dugdale, Sunday Times 'With Company of Strangers Wilson again shows himself to be one of our finest writers and a storyteller with few equals' Jim Driver, Time Out 'Wilson employs a slightly out-of-focus prose style that eminently suits his tale of intrigue and double-dealing ... watch his star, for it is surely in the ascendent' Vincent Banville, Irish Times 'Wilson's tale is a plotter's delight: spanning several decades and cleverly reworking past narratives in the light of new evidence, he creates an intriguing moral maze for his heroine to negotiate - and a puzzle of metaphors to match (he's a better stylist than du Maurier). Recommended' Chris Petit, Guardian 'A big, meaty novel of love and deceit ... with this novel Wilson vaults to the front-rank of thriller writers' Peter Guttridge, Observer

Wilson won the Crime Writer's Gold Dagger award for A Small Death in Lisbon in 1999 and this, his next novel, also uses Lisbon as a setting. It is, however, a wartime Lisbon in a Portugal with its own fascist government and secret police, not to mention a high population density of spies of every ilk. Two spies in particular prove to be star-crossed lovers from warring families: Karl Voss, an embittered and disillusioned German army officer now plotting the assassination of Hitler, and Andrea Aspinall, a young British mathematician who has been pitched unprepared into a cauldron of cross and double-cross. The two meet, fall in love and manage to survive an intelligence operation which goes murderously - and very excitingly - wrong, only to find themselves still on opposite sides as the Cold War sets in and the action moves to east Berlin in the 1970s. Wilson's long and ambitious saga of relationships forged in a clandestine world where no-one can be trusted adds a new dimension to the unfashionable genre of espionage novels. This is romantic, almost passionate, spy fiction rather than nail-biting edge-of-the-seat stuff but it still carries a mighty sting in its tail. (Kirkus UK)

Wilson ("A Small Death in Lisbon", 2000, etc.) uses the hopeless love affair between an amateur British agent and a desperate German officer to focus on two generations of European espionage, treachery, and double-dealing. Before the Blitz, mathematician Andrea Aspinall had led a sheltered life. Only the horrific death of her piano teacher, who had taken the place of the Portuguese father she never knew, makes her ripe for recruitment to the Company, as her mother's colleagues clannishly call themselves. Her knowledge of German and Portuguese makes her the ideal ingenue, disguised as "Anne Ashworth," to infiltrate suspect Irish businessman Patrick Wilshere's house in a Lisbon suburb in summer 1944 and nose out any traces of the industrial diamonds the Company is convinced are being sold to the Reich as precision parts in bomb manufacture. Meanwhile, Captain Karl Voss, already compromised by his unwitting role in the bombing of a Reichsminister's airplane, has been sent as military attache to the Lisbon legation. Like Andrea, Voss has been recruited to a cause: the assassination of Hitler on 20 July. When the two agents bump into each other, the chemistry is instantaneous. But the course of true love is disrupted by shifting loyalties, betrayals by higher-ups, the failure of the assassination attempt, and a massacre that spells the end of their lives in Portugal. This part of the story is a heartrending tale, unfolded with loving patience and rising tension. In the second, shorter part-which begins 24 years later with another round of deaths and Andrea's recruitment once more to the life she thought she'd left behind when she's sent to East Germany on a new mission for a new set of masters-Wilson overplays his hand, and the requisite plot twists upset the delicate balance of geopolitics and emotional intimacy. Even so, half of one of Wilson's loaves is more nourishing than most of his competition. (Kirkus Reviews)

Product Description
Lisbon 1944. Andrea Aspinall, mathematician and spy, and Karl Voss, military attache to the German Legation, to find love in a world where no-one can be believed. After a night of terrible violence, Andrea is left with a secret which precipitates life-long addiction to the clandestine world.

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4 Reviews 5 star:  (2) 4 star:  (1) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:  (1)           Average Customer Review 3.8 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   15 of 16 people found the following review helpful: 4.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing, both in plot and in structure., 23 Dec 2002 By  Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    Wilson's unusual ability to create fascinating and fully drawn characters within the confines of a plot-driven espionage novel make this novel particularly enjoyable. Andrea/Anne is a character who grows from a protected and naive twenty-year-old to a pragmatic spy and, later in life, to a committed political activist. Karl Voss and his family are "good Germans," disillusioned by Hitler's callous disregard for his soldiers and by his monomaniacal plans, and they believe they can serve their country best by betraying its Nazi leadership. As Karl makes contact with British intelligence and with Anne and other agents based in Lisbon, the reader watches their characters unfold as they respond to the intricacies of spy/counterspy maneuvering. More than half the novel consists of this Anne/Karl story during the waning days of World War II, a tightly drawn, tension-filled, and often genuinely moving interplay of characters and the forces which motivate them. Part II further develops the story of Anne in 1968 in London, with the short Part III taking place in 1989. These latter two sections, while intriguing and consistent with the author's themes, seemed to me to lack the immediacy and excitement of the earlier Lisbon section. The broad scope and intensity of World War II are sacrificed in favor of subtler, more abstract maneuvering during the Cold War in Part II. The motivations of the characters are fuzzier, the consequences of their behavior seem less cataclysmic, and what action there is feels a bit arthritic. The concluding Part III narrows the scope even more to a handful of characters in a country cottage setting, and while it is dramatic and probably realistic, I found it disappointing--as if the author himself were performing some double agent trickery on me, the reader. Like the best of the espionage novels, this one has plenty of action and excitement to keep the reader occupied, especially in Part I, but the book also seems to straddle a line. Because the author is also intent on developing character over an extended period of time, an unusual objective in a thriller, he also needs to include the less exciting Parts II and III which show the characters in their maturity and bring the story and themes full circle, an unusual structure and a fascinating attempt by the author to "have it all." Mary Whipple Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   22 of 25 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional, 6 Mar 2003 By  taking a rest - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    Author Robert Wilson has written 5 novels; unfortunately for readers this is only the second that has been offered The U.S. His debut, 'A Small Death Is Lisbon', was a very good book and was recognized with literary honors. 'The Company Of Strangers', elevates his work to an even higher level, which if he continues to maintain will place him amongst the great writers of espionage/thriller/mystery. For those unfamiliar with his work I believe the best comparison would be Mr. John LeCarre's earlier works, and some of the best that Mr. Robert Ludlum ever wrote. These are not techno-thrillers where plot and theme are replaced by endless descriptions of military hardware. Mr. Wilson writes detailed character studies that are as complex as the situations he places them in; when these aspects are combined with the talent to tell a great story that spans decades, this is an author who gives a reader all that can be expected from a great novel. The time line will take you from London of WWII, to the dawning of Glasnost in The Soviet Union, with stops in Berlin East and West, Lisbon and other locales. The book is about spies, very human, not the 007 Hollywood varieties. The motivation of why they work for a cause or country, what may make them turn, and sometimes turn once again is beautifully written and marvelously complex. The writer explores what takes place when an agent during a war finds that the country he once served, or perhaps betrayed, once the war concludes is now in the enemy's camp. Who is his new master, who does he deceive this time if deception is the choice? Does an agent serving a foreign power that becomes the victor continue to serve, or are the ideals he thought were being served proving to have been a fraud and new choices are made? The agents that take center stage in this book are all presented in various levels of detail, however none are vague. In the midst of the wild swings in world politics a variety of people have their beliefs confirmed, betrayed, and have their personal motives subjected to doubt. Do they spy as an act of revenge, a perceived wrong that was inflicted, is the spying based on theology, or is it monetary, or is it the game itself that is the attraction? In addition to all that I have mentioned, there is much more, and there are few authors who could carry out the complexity of plot without it become cloudy, and he includes revelations that in most hands would be cliché© at best, and more than likely laughable. 'The Company Of Strangers', does not wind down as the end arrives. The author literally brings his story to the conclusion on the final page. Mr. Wilson also has not succumbed to churning out work and presenting it in a brief and incomplete manner. He takes all the time he needs, and if that requires the better part of 500 pages, that is what he uses. You have the sense that you are reading exactly what the writer intended. His goal was to produce a great book, not a shallow utilitarian read, written with an eye toward a screenplay, or any other secondary use. This man is a brilliant writer; I recommend his work without condition. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   8 of 10 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Love amongst the ruins, 2 Jul 2002 By  Mub (Charlton Musgrove) - See all my reviews Having read 'A Small Death in Lisbon', I found this book almost immediately more satisfying. His earlier novel I found to be somewhat contrived, disjointed and unapproachable. By contrast, in 'The Company of Strangers' Wilson has manged to bridge my criticisms of the previous book by presenting a more understanding level of the human and individual response to the chaos of war and deception. This is love amongst the ruins, but it is nevertheless a realistic portrayal of the personal, working for the State; the private and the political; and the ultimate timeless conclusion that there can only ever be one winner. If I was to nitpick, then I would be at odds with one or two of Wilson's use of imagery and simile, but that would be perhaps to misunderstand his motive. Overall, the range of his narrative techniques have improved to the point where although we might guess at where the story might end, we are never quite sure how his characters will react when they get there. I would highly recommend this book, and look forward to the next. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 4 customer reviews...		Ad feedback   Most Recent Customer Reviews 1.0 out of 5 stars Once I put it down I could not pick it up again Normally I race through thrillers, but this one was the perfect soporific. Every time I tried it again I couldn't remember who any of the characters were. Read more Published on 29 May 2002 Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews › See all 4 customer reviews...

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