A long obituary for noted journalist and war correspondent Edward S. Behr appeared in yesterday’s New York Times. He died in Paris last Saturday at the age of 81. Among his many other jobs and positions, Mr. Behr was a reporter and editor for Newsweek magazine between 1965 and 1988.

   According to the Times, he “covered wars in Algeria, Albania, Congo, Vietnam, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland … wrote about China’s Cultural Revolution … went to Cuba after the 1962 missile crisis. And in 1968 alone he covered the Tet offensive in Vietnam, the student riots in Paris and the Soviet occupation of Prague.”

   Author of 19 books, including biographies of Nicolae Ceausescu and Emperor Hirohito of Japan, Mr. Behr began his career in journalism with Reuters in London while earning degrees from Cambridge University in 1951 and 1953.

   Of interest to mystery readers, especially those who enjoy spy and suspense fiction, is his one entry in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:

      BEHR, EDWARD (Samuel) (1926-2007)
        * Getting Even (Harper, 1980, hc) [Paris] H. Hamilton, 1980. (No paperback editions.)

Getting Even

   A bookseller on ABE describes the book this way, most likely taken, at least in part, from a blurb on the cover:

    “Espionage novel about a French spy who seeks revenge for the betrayal of his Chinese lover. It was a note left in a supermarket which set everything in motion, a cry for help from a beautiful young secretary in a Western embassy of the Chinese People’s Republic which led to her forcible liberation, a brief but passionate love affair with her liberator, their betrayal, and his intricate and extraordinary revenge. Novel based on two true events — a Chinese diplomat defected from the embassy of the People’s Republic of China in The Hague in 1970 returning voluntarily to China in 1973. Similarly, a Chinese mission official requested political asylum while passing through Orly Airport in May 1971, but was handed back to the Chinese authorities against his will. Beyond these two events, none of the characters or institutions in this book exist.”

   Mr. Behr was also the co-screenwriter for Half Moon Street, a film based on Paul Theroux’s Doctor Slaughter (H. Hamilton, UK, hc, 1984; U.S. title: Half Moon Street, Houghton Mifflin), a book also included in CFIV.

Half Moon

   The film starred Sigourney Weaver and Michael Caine, with the plot line described on IMDB as follows:

   Dr. Lauren Slaughter, a research fellow at the Arab-Anglo Institute in London is utterly frustrated by her job. To supplement her income, she starts moonlighting at the Jasmine Escort Service, where she has more control over men and money than she does at the office. On one of her ‘dates’, Lauren meets the politician Lord Bulbeck who is trying to mediate a peace accord between the Arabs and Israelis. Bulbeck falls in love with his escort, and unwittingly, Lauren becomes a pawn in some very dirty politics.

   A review in the New York Times says in part:

   As directed and co-written by Bob Swaim, Half Moon Street displays an odd eagerness to stay within the bounds of familiar genres, even where none exist. A change that takes the sting out of Mr. Theroux’s ending, and a bit of miscasting designed to drum up an impossible romance, are only two of the unhelpful modifications that have been made. And as played by Sigourney Weaver, Lauren becomes a good deal less complex. She merely seems arrogant, patronizing and unbearably smug.

   Mr. Behr also wrote a history of Prohibition in the US and large illustrated books about the Broadway musicals Miss Saigon and Les Misérables.

Les Miserables