In his spy fiction William Haggard created a handful of memorable characters, most especially security expert Colonel Charles Russell, who appears in nearly all of his books. Russell is generally considered his author's representative in political and cultural matters, an assumption that brought Haggard warm endorsements from the conservative press and attacks from a liberal press that interpreted his impatience with incompetence as condemnation of the weak. Haggard's espionage novels are short (rarely two hundred pages in paperback) and briskly paced. Most were reprinted as paperbacks a year or two after hardcover publication. Closer to novella length when compared to John le Carré's lengthy and intricately detailed yarns of fatigue and desperation, Haggard's stories have little room for subplots or complications apart from the main problem, little development of character beyond the changes and growth of a few central characters over the thirty-plus years of the...