Sat 16 Feb 2008
Review: LUCIEN AGNIEL – Code Name: “Icy”.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Crime Fiction IV , Reviews[10] Comments
LUCIEN AGNIEL – Code Name: “Icy”
Paperback Library 63-310; paperback original, May 1970.
Of the three books I have by Mr. Agniel, none are copyright in his name, only by either Coronet Publications, who owned Paperback Library, or Warner Brothers. (More about the latter in a minute.) That’s usually a fairly broad hint that the author didn’t exist, that it was a pen name or, more likely, a house name.
Not so in this case. First of all, and I just noticed this, my copy of Code Name: “Icy” has a handwritten inscription on the first inside blurb page, dedicating the book to Elizabeth. I’ll refrain from repeating the entire inscription. It’s not embarrassing, but I think it should remain private.
Then, looking in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, we find not only dates for Mr. Lucien (1919-1988), but a note that he’s included in Contemporary Authors. Pulling up the CA web page, I found that Elizabeth was his first wife, who died in 1973.
Over the years Lucien Agniel served in World War II and was awarded a Bronze Star, among other honors; worked for the Charlotte News, the US Information Agency, Radio Free Europe, and US News and World Report, among other jobs and occupations.
There are two books listed in CFIV for Mr. Agniel, this one in hand, plus Pressure Point, also from Paperback Library (November, 1970). Arguably there should be another, and I will send the suggestion on to Al in my next email to him: a book entitled Zeppelin (Paperback Library; May 1971), an adaptation of the Warner Brothers movie of the same title.
I don’t know if you’ve seen the film, starring Michael York and Elke Sommer, but since I haven’t, I looked up the story line on IMBD, which reads as follows: [An allied spy who has pretended to defect to Germany in World War I] “finds himself aboard the maiden voyage of a powerful new prototype Zeppelin, headed for Scotland on a secret mission that could decide the outcome of the war.”
Most of Code Name: “Icy” takes place in Paris, where the paths of the following characters converge: Eric Eis, an East German assassin who is working with the Russians but who apparently is a former American soldier presumably dead but whose body was never recovered. Fred Sherman of the CIA, who has received an anonymous letter reporting that Eric Hendricks, an American deserter, is still alive; Dr. Richard Hendricks of St. Louis, the brother of the man presumed dead; “Gloria,” who sent the anonymous letter to Fred Sherman; and Nicole, of Birmingham, England, working as a gold-digging stripper in a Parisian night spot, and whom Fred Sherman appears to becoming excessively fond of.
There is one other incidental participant in the tale, one unnamed, but suitably snooty President of France. It will come as no surprise that he survives. None of the others’ plan work out exactly as they had planned, however, except perhaps Nicole’s.
All in all, a rather modest affair, one that can be read in a couple of nights before turning off the light. Fred Sherman seems a fairly sappy guy for a CIA agent at first, but he redeems himself reasonably well toward the end. A quick skim through Pressure Point doesn’t turn up his name as an active participant, so it looks like this was his one and only outing – the only one worth recording in book form, that is.
February 17th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Steve,
Lucien Agniel was my uncle. He was a great story teller and his visits to our house were always highly anticipated and enjoyed. He also wrote a history of the Revolutionary War in the South, the title of which I believe is The Late Affair has Almost Broke My Heart. I’m interested in learning how you happened to get the copy of Code Name: “Icy” with the inscription to Elizabeth, and also whether you would be interested in selling it. Please respond to tdagniel@hotmail.com. Many thanks,
Ted Agniel
April 12th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
I knew Lucien Agniel, briefly, while in Berlin. He was active in the army’s MWR theater program. In fact, the woman I was to marry (and who ran the Music and Theater program), produced Lucien’s (one and only) play, “Father Ruffian.” This was in ’74 or ’75… had to be, because the space used for production was located in the HQ compound on Clay Alee. The theater location was moved to Andrews Kasern in the Lichterfelde section of Berlin by 1976.
I was thinking about Lucien today because of an article I’d read on Noel Coward… Lucien played the lead in a short play taken from Coward’s “Suite In Three Keys,” titled “Come Into The Garden, Maude.”
It happens that I liked the play so I remember it clearly.
Your mention of the inscription to “Elizabeth” got me to thinking… the wife that I wrote of was named Elizabeth and she both produced his play and directed him in the Coward piece. Could the inscription have been to her? They were friends. We went to dinner together a few times. Elizabeth and I divorced in ’87 and she had moved almost constantly since those days, working for the air force then the navy before finally retiring to someplace in Texas. She may have given up the book, along with others, to save on weight in moving. Just a thought on my part.
February 26th, 2009 at 1:40 am
I worked with Lucien Agniel in Georgetown, SC for a brief time on a daily tabloid newspaper. His wife, Elizabeth, was ill with a brain tumor and later passed away. Does anyone, particularly Ted, know where his daughter Stephi is now? She and my husband at the time and I spent a lot of time together. Lucien was a wonderful man and I have often wondered what happened to him after Elizabeth died.
June 28th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Lucien Agniel was my father and I agree with the comment posted by Joseph Welsh – the book must have been dedicated to someone other than my mother because no one in our family ever called her Elizabeth – she was Libba to us. My dad died in 1988 of pneumonia after a valiant struggle with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. He loved writing his “spy” novels. I remember when I was in high school he would get up at the crack of dawn during the week and write for a couple of hours before going to work. He had a lot of fun with these books and it’s nice to see that they haven’t been entirely forgotten.
June 29th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
I don’t know Betsy.
I have a cookbook Dad gave to Mom
“For my dear Elizabeth at the 47th parallel- AND UNTIL THE DAY I CAN INDULGE HER IN HER FAVORITE HABIT.”
Love, Lucien………………………..
June 29th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
For what it’s worth, here’s my reply to Joseph Welsh above:
Dear Joseph
You may be right in your conjecture, but the inscription does begin “My love, …” and is dated 1970, and Lucien’s first wife, who died in 1973, was named Elizabeth. I have assumed that the Elizabeth was she.
— And his reply:
Steve,
Lucien had remarried by the time I met him. Her name was Madeline (?). She was pale with dark hair and seemed frail to me.
You’re right about the inscription… My Elizabeth and Lucien were just friends.
I never knew the name of his first wife… the subject never came up.
Thanks for the e-mail. You’ve stirred old memories.
Regards,
-Joe Welsh
April 6th, 2011 at 9:57 am
I am an old friend of the Agniel family from their summers spent at Garden City Beach, S.C. The family was great friends with my Uncle Keith. I would love to hear from the children, especially Lucien 2, who was called Buzzy when I knew him.
Donna Williams Logan
April 25th, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Donna!
The Elvis impersonator lives! I live in Rhode Island, but I am currently at our beach house in Sunset Beach, NC – just one island down from the site of Keith & Emmit’s beloved Tene Rife on Ocena Isle Beach!
We’ll be here till May 1! Would love to hear from you and catch up!
Lucien Agniel Jr.
November 4th, 2013 at 12:18 pm
Lucien Angniel was a professor of mine in 1983-4 at Davis and Elkins College. He was a wonderful human being who was as entertaining as he was kind and generous. I think about him often and regret having only known him for a brief time. I hope to be as elegant as he was in those last years of his life.
October 10th, 2014 at 6:28 pm
I came upon this site by chance as I was researching Lucien Agniel. I never met Lucien, but he contacted me by telephone in 1978 because of a grievance I had filed against the Department of State due to on-the-job smoking in my workplace, after he had read about it in the State Dept. Newsletter.
He said that he wanted to write a story about my grievance because he “hated those State Department bureaucrats” and wanted to put them in their place.
If you wish to ready the story that Lucien wrote, go to my website and read story #3 posted there, written by Lucien Agniel in the Foreign Service Journal. He had wanted to give this story to the Reader’s Digest, but they turned it down.
I am very proud of my contribution in helping to achieve a smoke-free environment in the workplace and elsewhere as established today, and I am grateful to Lucien Agniel for helping to expose the complacency of the bureaucrats in charge who could have done something, but elected to do nothing instead.
I am sure that you will find Lucien’s story, along with the other 2 that I have placed on the website, most interesting.
Very sincerely,
/ Jacques Roman / http://home.earthlink.net/~polozna
Sent from my iPad