Final Malko spy novel steamy but stilted

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/08/2014 (4408 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s impossible to separate the back story of author Gérard de Villiers’ sensationalist life from a review of The Madmen of Benghazi, the latest of his 200 espionage novels and the most recent to be translated into English from French (originally Les Fous de Benghazi).

De Villiers is France’s most famously successful writer of tabloid-esque pulp espionage fiction. His super-spy hero, Malko Linge, is an Austro-Hungarian nobleman who works freelance for the CIA.

The so-called SAS series of books sold more than 100 million copies before the author’s death at 83 in 2013. The formula was basic: a sympathetic hero-spy, well-researched exotic espionage plots coupled with explicit kinky soft-porn sex involving beautiful women in almost every chapter.

On a more serious level, De Villiers’ books are also widely noted in intelligence circles for their exposé of espionage activity, previously secret classified materials and an uncanny anticipation of future geopolitical events. In a 1980 novel, he had Islamists plotting the murder of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat a year before Sadat’s actual assassination.

The Madmen of Benghazi deals with events around and after the revolution in Libya that toppled the regime of Moammar Gadhafi, including plot elements and descriptions of CIA activity in Libya. The information about the CIA presence there foreshadowed what became the tragic real-life events at the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi that lead to the deaths of American ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and others, including reputed CIA personnel. Those events unfolded well after this book was published.

De Villiers’ fictional plot is constructed around attempts of the U.S. and Britain to manipulate the chaotic political scene in Libya to install the great-grandson of the long-deposed King of Libya, British business tycoon/playboy Ibrahim al-Senussi, as the head of a new pro-Western government. Malko is enlisted to seduce al-Sennusi’s gorgeous sex-crazed British girlfriend in an effort to stay close to the would-be leader and foil his assassination by the Takfiri — a militia of violently extremist Islamists supported by Qatar, which is dedicated to establishing a Caliphate theocratic state in Libya following the overthrow of Gaddafi.

The book has its flaws. The plot is pulp-thin and littered with unresolved episodes. There’s little of the deep twists and turns and intrigue found in the works of espionage masters like the literate John le Carré and the populist Tom Clancy.

While the sex scenes featuring Malko, al-Senussi and the girlfriend are frequent and graphic enough to fulfill a wide variety of prurient fantasies, the characters of these main players are only sketchily developed.

The writing, possibly as a result of the translation process, seems flat and straightforward, and the action is often impeded by detail about Islam and Middle-Eastern culture. It’s necessary background and exposition, but it slows the story.

On the positive side, De Villiers’ detailed knowledge of the region and insights into its peoples will add to your knowledge of the origins and outcomes of the endless political and religious turmoil that continues to tear apart the lives of ordinary citizens born into that part of the world.

For a fascinating definitive profile of De Villiers, read The Spy Novelist Who Knows Too Much by Robert F. Worth published in The New York Times (Jan. 30, 2013) and available online. It’s a great piece of journalism that’s extremely likely to lead you to seek out The Madmen of Benghazi for a fast-paced, easy-to-knock-off summer read, and an introduction to the work of a world-famous author who is still relatively unknown in North America.

 

Jim Millican is an obsessive reader of crime and espionage fiction with a predilection for the works of John le Carré and Elmore Leonard.