Customer Reviews

Neither Five nor Three

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

MacInnes often has a main character who is a journalist, struggling to fight against lies being circulated into the media by Communist-controlled or -inspired writers. In this novel, we may have her clearest portrayal of writer as freedom fighter, fighting to expose the hidden sources of anit-American journalists. There is her usual element of romance, as well as the gifted amateurs who take on the trained operatives, and win. And always I enjoy her carefully crafted writing; she was a lot more than a writer of "action" novels.

This book has been less popular than many of her others, but it's one of my favorites.

First of all, let me highly recommend MacInnes to anyone who likes spy thrillers. But ... don't start with NEITHER FIVE NOR THREE. It is one of her least appealing works.

The problem is that none of the characters are especially sympathetic, even the central hero. She goes about as deeply into the minds of the bad guys as she does in any of her books, and it leaves you with a fairly bad taste in your mouth.

Furthermore, the trademark romance plot is kind of stifled. The two characters who would, in most MacInnes novels, have fallen in love are actually former young lovers who have been separated by WW2. Now the woman is engaged to someone else, and the whole thing is more awkward than romantic.

Also, the setting is before the cold war was openly being fought, so the battle lines are not as clear as they are in her other novels. After four WW2 spy novels, and then two non-spy romantic novels, this was her first attempt at a cold war story.

This isn't a bad novel, but it is far from MacInnes at her best.

My first contact with Helen MacInnes was when I was 13 years old and found Neither five nor three in the school library. From then on I have searched for her books in my country in the US and France. I keep rereading my torn copy. In these times the way Helen MacInnes depicts the struggle between communism and democracy may seem out of date, yet the characters, on both sides are very well built, with depth and humor. You can relate to them, feel the atmosphere of those cold war years. One of the things that are more impressing is the fact you feel watched and cornered as if you were deep behind the iron curtain while the novel is set in downtown New York. At the same time, you have your share of humor which give you time to catch your breath. Overall an excellent book which has kept over the years.

All Helen MacInnes' adventure/spy novels are as well written as anything LeCarre wrote, but more than that, were based on facts. Her husband was a member of England's MI5, Intelligence, which contributed to her knowledge of the doings of Soviet's Smersh and the implements of death developed in Dept 13. One member of my family thought Smersh was a fiction, was astonished when she learned it actually existed! This particular novel was one of MacInnes' first and the premise on which it is based, is just as true today as when written -- 2 and 2 are still four, neither 5 nor 3 -- as political spinners would have us believe -- never more true than when selling the public on a candidate for office!