{"id":1201,"date":"2005-07-30T17:50:57","date_gmt":"2005-07-31T00:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2005\/07\/londons_literate_sleuth\/"},"modified":"2005-07-30T17:50:57","modified_gmt":"2005-07-31T00:50:57","slug":"londons_literate_sleuth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2005\/07\/londons_literate_sleuth.html","title":{"rendered":"LONDON’S LITERATE SLEUTH"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sir Ian Blair, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police, sounds like a well-read police chief. “Al Qaeda does not act like some classic Graham Greene cell. It has very loose affiliations …” he told reporters<\/strong><\/font><\/a>, following the arrest of four suspects, two seen below, in the failed July 21 bombings. I’m not sure which classic cell he was thinking of in which of Greene’s books<\/font><\/strong><\/a> — the successful terrorist bombers in “The Quiet American”<\/strong><\/font><\/a> obviously come to mind — but I’m thinking of the one in “The Honorary Consul”<\/strong><\/font><\/a> because 1) it was tightly controlled, 2) it involved a major screw-up, and 3) bombing was not the mission.
\n\"july21bomberarrest.jpg\"<\/a>
\nPhoto from Daily Mail, via Zuma Press<\/small>
\nIn “The Honorary Consul”<\/strong><\/font><\/a> a handful of Paraguayan terrorists slips into northern Argentina to kidnap the British ambassador during his visit to a sleepy provincial town. \"greenePHOTObySEANSMITH.jpg\"<\/a>The mission — on orders from El Tigre, a nasty nearly mythological figure who remains hidden in the Paraguayan jungle — is to hold the ambassador hostage and exchange him for several political prisoners. But the terrorists kidnap the wrong man. Their screw-up results in a much worse tragedy all around than if the operation had been a success. Big contrast there. Not incidentally — and no surprise coming from Graham Greene<\/strong><\/font><\/a> — it is the cell’s rigid ideology that compounds the failure and magnifies the tragedy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sir Ian Blair, the head of London’s Metropolitan Police, sounds like a well-read police chief. “Al Qaeda does not act like some classic Graham Greene cell. It has very loose affiliations …” Greene’s books — the successful terrorist bombers in “The Honorary Consul” because 1) it was tightly controlled, 2) it involved a major screw-up, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1201","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-jn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}