In her latest book Ilium, Lea Carpenter proves that women can indeed write espionage novels despite what someone at the CIA’s Langley headquarters told her. She also challenges convention by making her protagonist female. Goodbye James Bond, hello??? Unusually, Lea never names her spy, something I didn’t notice until I’d finished the book. Either Lea is very clever or I’m very stupid. Or both. Ilium is a love story about a young British woman whose life hasn’t really taken off. She’s craving a bit of adventure and excitement when she meets a dashing, older American spy and unwittingly becomes the perfect asset in a long overdue covert special op. Lea is super knowledgeable on all things covert. And the novel moves from London to Mallorca, Croatia, Paris and Cap Ferret, a last blast of glam summer spots.
Here’s an edited excerpt from our talk. If you want to listen to the full chat, it’s on my website, as well as my podcast Elena Meets the Author available wherever you listen to podcasts.
Elena: Hello Lea and welcome to the show. Can you please give us a brief synopsis of your novel?
Lea: This is not the usual story of an asset. The usual story is they’re recruited, they’re often very well-paid and they know at least a portion of what they’re doing. I thought it would be interesting to have an asset who didn’t know what she was doing. In the espionage world it’s often said that the reason people commit espionage can be defined by the acronym MICE standing for money, ideology, coercion and ego.
Elena: Fascinating
Lea: I thought, what if it’s not any of them, what if it’s for love? What if the person who asks her is not only someone she loves, but her husband who is asking her at a very vulnerable time in his life.
I was told by a case officer that asking someone to spy for their country is like asking them to marry you. You ideally only ask the question once and you only ask when you know the answer will be yes. And in my book, she’s asked by the man she’s in love with and who she realizes she can’t say no to.
Elena: I read that you had a lot of inspirations for this book, starting with the killing of a CIA agent, someone named William Buckley?
Lea: Yes, he was our station chief in Beirut in the eighties. And he was kidnapped, tortured and assassinated. That was a huge breaking of the international espionage code. If there was a code it would be we don’t kill other spies. Yes, everyone carries out targeted assassination campaigns, but the head of MI6 is not going to order a hit on a KGB officer.
Almost thirty years after the Buckley killing there was a car bombing in Damascus, a joint CIA Mossad operation where we killed a guy named Imad Mugnia, the real leader of Hezbollah. It turned out that Mugnia was the one who had assassinated Buckley. And so, I imagined a story in which the men around Buckley, his friends who knew who had killed him would wait almost their entire lives to avenge that killing. The idea is that revenge can take time when you are in a forever war.
Elena: So interesting. I also read that you were inspired by a series of Cy Twombly paintings?
Lea: Yes, a beautiful series called Fifty Days at Iliam. It’s Twombly’s depiction of the Trojan war (which Homer famously depicted in the Iliad.) In the Iliad there’s this cyclicality of violence… loss and revenge, loss and revenge. At the end of the Iliad, these two tough guys (sworn enemies), Priam and Achilles, sit down together and weep over their losses- Achilles over the loss of his best friend and Priam over the loss of his child. These two men who are in the same industry, they can empathize with one another. I was interested in that human element for my book.
Elena: What advice would you give a wannabe espionage writer?
Lea: Read the greats. Graham Greene, John Le Carré, Tony Gilroy. Read the authors who you love and you will eventually develop your own style.
Elena: Are there any current authors you love?
Lea: Mick Herron of the Slow Horses series. I think he’s absolutely terrific and doing something different with the genre. You don’t have Daniel Craig at the center, you’ve got Gary Oldman, eating day old sandwiches, drinking himself into oblivion and yet, he’s the smartest guy in the room.
Elena: I absolutely love Slow Horses! Thank you so much Lea, that was a fascinating interview.
ps. Best news of September? Slow Horses Season 4 debuted on September 4th. Here’s the trailer.
September, 2024
