Spy Novel with a Difference

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feeding Reagan's wild Cold War campaign and seeking to boost his credibility? • Did Nancy Reagan go to finishing school in Europe?

Are the CIA teally such a hopeless bunch of amiable bumblers and narrow minded careerists? And do the Stalinists run the only serious intelligence agency in the world?

These are just some of the questions that might spring to mind if you finished. reading American Surrender by Michael Brady, a book deceptively despolic Socialist Press pamphlet outlining programme of action against the lory offensive.

Price 45p including postage from WSL, BM Box 5277, London WCIN 3XX. cribed as "wildly entertaining"' by an unnamed Guardian correspondent.

The most wild aspect of the book is its total and almost unrelieved implausibility.

The characterisations are pathetic. There is Anna, the inevitably beautiful Russian spy; there are the predictable steelyeyed, poker faced burcaucrats and spy chiefs; there is a hardbitten US newsman, a young innócent young bourgeois woman entrapped by the KGB while at finishing school... all as tedious as they are unoriginal.

Imperialists lose!

The dialogue is stilted, the sex scenes routine and the action is all but imperceptible until half way through the book.

So why review it?

Well American Surrender has one saving grace over its rivals in the sphere of spy fiction: at the end, the imperialists lose!

The KGB is depicted as continuously one step ahead in a grand master plan to capture control of Western Europe and the USA.

Their plot involves engincering the election of a leading anti-Sovict Senator as President.

Meanwhile the imperialist spy system is shown to be hopelessly outmatched.

The Russians have agent Anna Zasoravna loyally climbing in and out of beds and eventually working her way into the office of the President; and they have Colonel Sakhov, the cold (but quietly sexy!) spy master.

• But the Americans find no James Bond or superhero to spring to their rescue. The Russian plan goes with stopwatch precision.

And one other factor is also worthy of note: the novel takes account of the fact that-if given a choice-the majority of American (or any other) people would plump without hesitation for being "red" rather, than dead. It is by exploiting this that the Russian plan succeeds.

Attractive spy

We cannot really hope of course for the counter-revolutionary Kremlin leaders to resolve our fears of a Reaganlaunched nuclear holocaust by unleashing any bold aggressive "check-mate" initiative like the one imagined in this book.

. Nor must we imagine that the wild men in the US military establishment would allow an "American Surrender" in the terms envisaged. Reagan: is he a Russian plot!

But as we battle each day to weaken British, American and world imperialism from within, it is perhaps pleasant to dream of the simple master-plan that could neutralise the US nuclear John Lister reviews "Americ: Surrender" by Michael Brady published by Sphere, £1.25 stockpile without a missile fired.

It is her success in implementing such a plan rather than her prowess in bed that makes Anna Zasoravna by far the most attractive spy in pulp fiction!

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Commie-baiting US Senator, an E THIS WINTER!