Review: Nigel's people
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 6, 2012
"Those disposable identities donned by spies as required by their missions." - contextual definition of "legends""I'll ring Sarah later on. After the dinner party at Harold's back in June, it's most plausible that Alec would try to see such an attractive girl again. I know I would if I were in his shoes." - NigelEquivalent to eighteen printed pages, LEGENDS by Antoine Bello is perhaps too brief to achieve lasting greatness, but as a short story it's a clever and darkly amusing tale that may point the reader to the author's longer works (e.g.The Missing Piece).Here during the closing years of the Cold War, Nigel, an archivist with a British intelligence agency - presumably MI6 - volunteers to upgrade three legends currently gathering dust on the shelf, i.e. bring them up-to-date for use such that they can withstand potential scrutiny by the diabolical KGB. The three are: Alec, a marketing consultant; Harold, a minor mandarin at the Foreign Office; Sarah, a City bank employee.Mind you, Alec, Harold, and Sarah, all ostensibly in their thirties, are not real people. They're simply cover stories - legends - awaiting adoption by flesh and blood agents.As Nigel's personal identity merges with those of his three fictional charges over the next ten months, LEGENDS becomes a cautionary tale on the perils of taking one's job too seriously.Though the author is French and most of his books seem to be only available in that language, Bello seems to realize that, when it comes to spy stories, a British spin on it is almost de rigueur. After all, Smiley, Bond, and Quiller were all in Her Majesty's service.The plot could, I would think, have easily been extended to a full length novel. I liked LEGENDS immensely and was left wanting more.