The Broken Penny by Julian Symons
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

"[...] an awful conformity of the human spirit. [...] Draw the curtains close, turn out the lights, pretend that knocking at the house next door does not exist, put cottonwool in your ears against the screams, be thankful above all that it is not your turn, perhaps it will never be your turn."

What an exasperating read! A few morsels of wisdom - like the above passage that reminds me of Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous quote "Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me" - and few fragments of good prose are buried in a ridiculous story. It is hard to believe the plot so silly comes from one of the "grandmasters of British mystery", Julian Symons, the author of the very good The Progress of a Crime that I rated above four stars. I have read and reviewed here on Goodreads nine other novels by Mr. Symons; they are all better than The Broken Penny (1953).

The protagonist of the story which takes place in Europe in the early 1950s is Charles Garden, once a sort of "professional revolutionary." He had been connected with various leftist causes such as the fight against Franco's regime during the Spanish Civil War. Mr. Garden is summoned to meet his acquaintance at the "Central Liaison Organization", an obvious front for one of the departments of British intelligence. He is supposed to convince a certain Professor Arbitzer, a deposed and exiled head of a coalition government in an unnamed European country, to return there and lead the popular upraising to overthrow the Soviet-imposed Communist government.

Treachery and murder, all connected with politics, begin to happen while the plot is still located in the UK. But soon the group of main characters leave on a secret plane flight to Prof. Arbitzer's country. By the way, they take a dog with them for this secret mission; yeah, the plot is that ridiculous! There are more killings and treachery when the story moves to that unnamed country, somewhere in southeastern Europe, where the Soviets installed their puppet governments after World War II.

I find the utterly idiotic plot offensive. The author tries to convey some deep thoughts about the human cost of political struggle and revolution yet his sincere and well-expressed humanistic concerns are completely defiled by silly sequences of plot events. I love demented novels, but only when intended by the author; here it is clear that the author does not know how preposterous the story is. The two final monumental plot twists undo all previous plot twists and leave the readers twisting with anger.

I am also angry about offensive clichés: for instance, anything that is wrong with a woman can be cured by two strong slaps on both sides of her face. A woman thus righted will then begin to behave properly and fall in love with the slapper. Obviously. All that cr.p from a really good author who can write beautiful sentences like:

"How the past overwhelms us as soon as it comes washing through any gap in the high wall we have made to keep out the seas of memory, what a mistake it had been to turn left instead of right."

Other than a few good sentences the best thing in the novel is the character of good old Mr. Goldblatt, Mr. Garden's employer. Readers beware: the blurb on the cover "High grade thriller" is a barefaced lie!

One and a half stars.


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