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Author of Espionage and Suspense Novels
Helen MacInnes was a popular writer of espionage and
suspense novels whose career spanned the period from World War II to the late
Cold War.
MacInnes was born in Glasgow, Scotland on October 7, 1907. At the age of five the family moved to the resort town of Helensburg. MacInnes attended the prestigious Hermitage School in Helensburg. She went on to attend Glasgow University. She majored in French and German and minored in English, geology and moral philosophy. In 1928 she attained a Masters degree concentrating on French and German. While attending the University of Glasgow, MacInnes met her future husband, Gilbert Highet. After graduation, MacInnes became a librarian at the University of Glasgow and later for the education department of the county of Dumbartonshire. She later enrolled in the School of Librarianship at the University College in London, obtaining her diploma in 1931. MacInnes married Gilbert Highet on September 22, 1932. After their marriage, they lived in Oxford, where Highet was a don at St John's college. Together they spent several summers traveling Europe. To fund their trips they worked together translating books from German into English. In 1937, the Highets moved to New York where Gilbert Highet had accepted an invitation to teach at Columbia University. A year later, Columbia made Highet a professor of Greek and Latin. By this time the couple had a son and MacInnes began to write her first book. MacInnes' first novel was Above Suspicion, published in 1941. The novel is set in the years immediately prior to World War II and tells the tale of a young couple traveling to Germany to find a British agent. In 1943, the novel was made into a movie by MGM, starring Joan Crawford and Fred MacMurry. Her next suspense novel, Assignment in Brittany, was based in wartime occupied France, with a British agent sent to impersonate a Breton nationalist. While MacInnes was writing during the war, her husband worked in British intelligence. MacInnes' next two novels, While Still We Live (1944) and Horizon (1945), also dealt with World War II. She then shifted to the Cold War with Neither Five Nor Three in 1951 (the interim Friends and Lovers in 1947 and Rest and Be Thankful, 1949 were love stories rather than suspense novels). The Highets became naturalized American citizens in 1951 and lived in the U.S. for the rest of their lives. MacInnes continued to write a book about every 2-3 years, almost all of them dealing with the Cold War. Almost all of her books were best sellers, but she's probably best known for The Salzburg Connection (1969), which concerns an effort by various inviduals to retrieve Nazi loot from an Austrian lake. Her last book was Ride a Pale Horse, published in 1984 a year before her death. MacInnes' novels are known for their attention to the detail of the local surroundings. MacInnes conducted extensive research into the history, customs, religions, and political events of the regions where she based her stories. Her characters are realistic and sympathetic, and her portrayal of espionage is detailed and believable. Like many suspense writer, MacInnes includes romantic subplots in most of her novels. MacInnes once explained her work by saying, "A peaceful country needs a good intelligence service. Freedom will not survive unless we know the nature of the attack on it. That is what my books are all about." She is credited with a popular quotation (from Assignment in Brittany): "He who expects the worst won't be disappointed." At the time of MacInnes's death at age 77 in 1985, her 21 novels had sold more than 23 million copies in the United States at the time of her death in 1985. They had been translated into more than 22 languages. Helen MacInnes' novels:
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