The Smiler with the Knife is the first and best of the three spy-themed thrillers Nicholas Blake presented as part of his Nigel Strangeways fair-play mystery series. The other stories to deal with espionage and great danger to Great Britain are 1954’s The Whisper in the Gloom and The Sad Variety published a decade after that. It is also the only one where Blake (the pen name for poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis) wrested the protagonist detective post from the cerebral Strangeways and gave it to another character. It is not Nigel but his wife Georgia Strangeways, celebrated explorer and adventurer, who rises to the occasion and saves England from being dominated by Fascist right-wing powers trying to shatter Parliament and control the country by a coup.
I initially read The Smiler with the Knife more than 15 years ago, but that one reading has always stuck with me. It is a successful book on all fronts, as great entertainment, as a propulsive exercise in episodic and through-arc suspense, and as an engaging character study of allies and enemies featuring Georgia at its center. In some areas it surpasses John Buchan’s cornerstone man-on-the-run spy thriller The 39 Steps (1915), as Blake makes sure to define the very high stakes of the game and underscore the very real possibility that Georgia could lose the battle against an alert, wide-reaching, and formidable opponent. By the way, the narrative from the first chapter and throughout the story assures the reader that the heroine’s success is an eventual fait accompli; as early as page 14, for example, we learn that
I initially read The Smiler with the Knife more than 15 years ago, but that one reading has always stuck with me. It is a successful book on all fronts, as great entertainment, as a propulsive exercise in episodic and through-arc suspense, and as an engaging character study of allies and enemies featuring Georgia at its center. In some areas it surpasses John Buchan’s cornerstone man-on-the-run spy thriller The 39 Steps (1915), as Blake makes sure to define the very high stakes of the game and underscore the very real possibility that Georgia could lose the battle against an alert, wide-reaching, and formidable opponent. By the way, the narrative from the first chapter and throughout the story assures the reader that the heroine’s success is an eventual fait accompli; as early as page 14, for example, we learn that
...while it was not reasonable to suppose that a notice from a Rural District Council could cause anyone much trouble — let alone alter the course of history, or that England might be saved by the cutting of a hedge -- yet so it turned out.
I wonder if the choice to narratively reassure readers of a triumphant English outcome was due to the uncertainty and unease surely felt around the globe in 1939. Blake/Day-Lewis was very much a political being, and it is notable that the insidious enemy of Smiler is not a bomb-throwing radical leftist but a populist conservative planning to harness the working man’s anger at an ineffective government as a way to gain power, not through democratic means but by an insurrection approved and encouraged by his enthusiastic base. The people might see their new self-appointed leader as a patriot and a hero – after all, he is doing all this for his country and the people, or so his propaganda will claim – but a Fascist dictator by any other name still smells of rot.
That said, The Smiler with the Knife works even better as a grand entertainment than as a political cautionary tale. For it is a story that pushes forward, one adventure following the next, with wonderfully assured pacing and plotting. Nigel and Georgia Strangeways are first pulled into the mystery after finding a rather ordinary cameo locket along the hedgerow of their house in the country. An oddly acting neighbor arrives to claim it, and the photo of the middle-aged woman inside the locket proves the unlikely catalyst that soon has Georgia investigating a secret society called The English Banner.
That said, The Smiler with the Knife works even better as a grand entertainment than as a political cautionary tale. For it is a story that pushes forward, one adventure following the next, with wonderfully assured pacing and plotting. Nigel and Georgia Strangeways are first pulled into the mystery after finding a rather ordinary cameo locket along the hedgerow of their house in the country. An oddly acting neighbor arrives to claim it, and the photo of the middle-aged woman inside the locket proves the unlikely catalyst that soon has Georgia investigating a secret society called The English Banner.
Smiler is fashioned so that every chapter has a curious new puzzle to solve or piece of the conspiracy to collect, and chapter titles prove both accurate (if abstract) and delightfully enticing: “The Episode of the Clock-Golf Course”, “The Episode of the Nottingham Earthquake”. Resourceful, instinctive, and smart, Georgia Strangeways covers a great deal of ground figuratively and literally as she first infiltrates the inner circle of the powerful cabal and then must escape with what she knows. But the E.B.’s webs stretch far, and no one can truly be trusted until she reunites with Nigel and Sir John Strangeways, the latter in his capacity as head of C Branch at Scotland Yard.
Characterization is particularly good in this adventure, and Blake allows some of the heroes and villains that Georgia encounters to make a strong impression on her and the reader. As the suspected leader of the government uprising – the secret society is keeping both plans and players a mystery from the public until the time to act – the dangerously soft-spoken Chilton Canteloe makes a worthy target of investigation, while the charming cricketer Peter Braithwaite becomes one of Georgia’s few trusted confidantes, demonstrating his courage and duty to country to the end. Smiler can also claim to be one of those rare thrillers that is genuinely page-turning. If, like Georgia, the reader gets fully immersed into the tale, the conclusion will likely be a race to the finish for all involved.
The prolific GAD genre bloggers Kate and Nick also have reviews of The Smiler with the Knife. Check out crossexaminingcrime and The Grandest Game in the World.
Characterization is particularly good in this adventure, and Blake allows some of the heroes and villains that Georgia encounters to make a strong impression on her and the reader. As the suspected leader of the government uprising – the secret society is keeping both plans and players a mystery from the public until the time to act – the dangerously soft-spoken Chilton Canteloe makes a worthy target of investigation, while the charming cricketer Peter Braithwaite becomes one of Georgia’s few trusted confidantes, demonstrating his courage and duty to country to the end. Smiler can also claim to be one of those rare thrillers that is genuinely page-turning. If, like Georgia, the reader gets fully immersed into the tale, the conclusion will likely be a race to the finish for all involved.
The prolific GAD genre bloggers Kate and Nick also have reviews of The Smiler with the Knife. Check out crossexaminingcrime and The Grandest Game in the World.
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