'...through the grace of God and friendly governments we are allowed a certain number of immoral acts, but we are obliged to avoid merely stupid ones.'[loc. 1878]
Long unavailable, Ford's Cold War spy thriller with added Christopher Marlowe is a delight. There are two major plots, very much entwined: the discovery of an unknown Marlowe play, 'The Assassin’s Tragedy', and the theft of some cutting-edge military hardware. Marlowe's play deals with spycraft, a mysterious fellow who might have royal blood, and the narrow line between patriotism and treason. The modern narrative also explores these issues, via role-playing games, divided loyalties, and scholarly imagination.
The Scholars of Night begins with the assassination of college professor and Soviet agent Allan Berenson, and the theft of the Marlowe manuscript from his office. (I would love to read the excellent forgery left in its place, which apparently features a Big Mac.) Berenson's lover, a spy known as WAGNER, and his protege Nicholas Hansard -- who reads the Marlowe manuscript 'reading not for content but for inference, looking for the mind behind the lines' and mentally recreates scenes from its author's life -- both have good reason to regret, and avenge, Berenson's death.
There are riddling codenames, wargames in several formats, feints and counterfeints, and a number of excellent secondary characters, each of whom has a fascinating backstory and a web of connnections. Ford revels in the revealing detail, in vividly-described locations (I especially enjoyed the scenes in London and Cambridge) and in the fine nuances of character. This is a complex novel, which rewards close attention and probably a reread -- soon.
Written and set in the mid-1980s, which feels like a very different world. (Charles Stross's introduction describes some of the differences: "the weirdest, most alienating difference a time traveler from the world of 2021 to that of 1986 would notice is not the bipolar macho politics of nuclear superpower confrontation, but that nobody saw the victory of capitalism as inevitable. History had not yet turned a very important corner. In 1986 there existed a globe-straddling colossus, a revolutionary superpower that—with its satellite states and fellow travelers like China—represented a third of the planetary population and held two-thirds of its weapons. The Soviet Union...") Thus, characters marvel at 'a notebook-sized portable computer': nearly all telephones are fixed landlines: CCTV is not present. On the other hand, plus ça change: AI, not yet a reality when the novel was written, is a Bad Thing.
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