F. SCOTT FITZGERALD: AMERICAN SPY

This epistolary novel explores whether F. Scott Fitzgerald really was recruited to assassinate Marshal Philippe Pétain in 1940.

Henri Duval is a double agent. His public persona is that of a functionary of the despicable Vichy government in France; in reality, he is working for the Resistance, which often gets him into embarrassing and dangerous situations. He is also supposed to be a Hollywood screenwriter, a guise that enables him to meet and befriend Fitzgerald, now pretty much washed up and rarely sober despite the anxious ministrations of his mistress, gossip columnist Sheilah Graham. Eventually, Henri and Fitzgerald make it to Vichy and are granted an audience with Pétain, but it is no spoiler to say that the assassination is badly bungled (or readers surely would have heard about it). All the trappings are here: the serendipitous discovery of a locked trunk in an estate sale; the existence of silent confederate Hyman Skolski (the recipient of Henri’s fevered letters); the breaking of the code they devised; and the fact that Pétain is a big fan of Fitzgerald and the Roaring ’20s (who knew?). All this is framed with an introduction written by a distinguished Princeton historian who even provides footnotes from time to time. Because this witty novel is in a historical setting, Sinclair can, for example, have Henri stumble on the Marx brothers at their most manic (“I can’t make sense of them, but they’re very nice fellows. They enjoyed themselves immensely making fun of my heavy French accent”). Later, the double agent falls hard for a mysterious woman on the Santa Monica beach only to discover that she, too, is a famous, real-life Hollywood mistress. The author does a fine job with Fitzgerald: vain and impulsive, somehow both childish and childlike, and a real challenge for Henri to handle. Henri himself is a wonderful creation. From the first, he is disdainful of these Americans, especially the Los Angeles subspecies. A man can’t find decent food or wine here, he wails, and the vaunted movies are clichéd and trashy. But of course, he softens to the point that (Zut alors!) he is only bemused by, not contemptuous of, these Americans, though he stops short of becoming a baseball fan.

A decidedly clever and well-written flight of fancy starring a literary legend.