The Antagonists (Haggard novel)

(CC) Photo: Clayton Evans
William Haggard on the back cover of The Conspirators, 1967

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The Antagonists is a 1964 suspense novel by the British author William Haggard published in England by Cassell and in the United States by Ives Washburn. It was Haggard's sixth of 21 books involving his protagonist Colonel Charles Russell, the urbane head of the unobtrusive but lethal Security Executive, a government counter-intelligence agency clearly based on the actual MI5 or Security Service, where he moves easily and gracefully along C.P. Snow's Corridors of Power in Whitehall. Like Haggard's earlier books it has standard elements of suspense thrillers along with detailed examinations of character, but with more scenes of direct action and somewhat less dissection of character and motivation than in the first three books.

Plot

Protagonist is perhaps too strong a word to describe Colonel Russell. As Haggard himself wrote about his fiction:

My novels are chiefly novels of suspense with a background of international politics. A Colonel Charles Russell of the Security Executive, a not entirely imaginary British counter-espionage organization, while not a protagonist in the technical sense, holds the story line together in the background by his operations, while the characters in the foreground carry the action."

Reception and/or Appraisal

Reviews were very favorable:

The New York Times: xxxx

Kirkus Reviews: xxxx