THE INNOCENT by Ian McEwan

Finished Su 3/21/21

This is one of my hardbacks that I bought at a library book sale on Sa 6/14/97 and I had never read the novel.  

Set in Berlin, 1955.

Leonard Marnham- 'The Innocent' is a 25 year old man who still lived with his parents in Tottenham, a suburb of London. He is working for MI 5 or MI 6 and his cover is that he is working with the postal service and is dealing with underground lines in the city of Berlin.

Actually it's a British/ American project to dig under the Russian section of the city, tap into their telephone lines and tape secret conversations.

Leonard falls in love with a local German woman, Maria Eckdorf

Maria was married to Otto and he is a drunk and stalks is estranged wife. One night Leonard and Maria are alone in her bedroom and they notice that Otto is hiding in a closet. 

Leonard and Otto get into a fight and Otto is slain. A shoe last is jammed into his skull. And, then they decide to cut up the body for disposal. 

Leonard packs the body parts into two large suitcases and transfers these bags to the underground tunnel.

The fight, murder, and cutting up of Otto's body is one of the most graphic and harrowing descriptions I've ever read. 

Then Leonard calls the Russians and alerts them to the tunnel. He hopes that the discovery of the spy operation will muddy the investigation of the murder or it will be completely ignored. It was ignored.

In the last section of the book Leonard receives a letter from Maria almost 25 years later. She tells him that she had married Bob Glass, Leonard's boss on the spy project. And he is visiting The Berlin Wall to remember what he and Maria went through back in the days of The Cold War.

In the epilogue it is revealed that the novel is based on truth (without the murder, I would guess).

"The Berlin Tunnel, or Operation Gold, was a joint CIA-MI6 venture that operated for just under a year, until April 1956". 

George Blake, who was a character in the book and lived in Leonard's building in Berlin. Blake is the one who betrayed the project as early as 1953.

I will order and read more by Ian McEwan. He is the author of 'THE ATONEMENT' which was made into a pretty good film