Fri 6 Jun 2025
Spy Stories I’m Reading: PATRICIA McGERR “Match Point in Berlin.”
Posted by Steve under Stories I'm Reading[6] Comments
PATRICIA McGERR “Match Point in Berlin.” Novelet. Published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1968. . Winner of the MWA contest sponsored by EQMM the preceding year. Not known to have been reprinted. [This statement is incorrect. It was the basis of Chapters 1-3 of Mead’s fixup novel Legacy of Danger. See Comment #3, by Mike Grost.] Drawing below by Austin Briggs.
Selena Mead was at one time (the 60s) what might be called a hot item. As one of the few female espionage agents in the business, she appeared in some 25 short stories, one novel, and one collection (cleverly disguised as a novel), Before the lady’s first appearance in 1963, her creator, Patricia McGerr, had been the author of a number of traditional mysteries, but with several based on gimmicks, shall we say, that few other authors would have been hard pressed to even imagine.
As an example, one of these, Pick Your Victim, reviewed by Bill Deeck earlier on this blog, involves case in which “the murderer is known but the victim is not.” Here’s the link:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=24770
Mrs. Mead had already been around for a while when “Match Point in Berlin” was published, but it goes way back in her career, in fact before she even had a career. It begins when she was a young woman who is waiting for a train in Berlin as the first step in returning her to a life back in Washington DC, one that she believes she wants. It is a totally mundane one, or it would be, especially compared to one she ends up really having.
But a man, recognizing her as an American, gives her a list of – she doesn’t know, but he is quite serious about it not falling into the wrong hands.
It is hidden in a box of matches, or is it? Through a series of mishaps (or are they?) a chase ensues, taking her through all sorts of areas of Berlin where a young naive woman should perhaps not know about, including one moment I jumped at a recognition – no, a realization – that took me by surprise, brilliantly disguised.
The story is very atmospheric, well choreographed, and filled with enough twists and turns that make it impossible to stop reading. Guaranteed.
The Internet page below tells the story of a TV series to be called Selena Mead that almost ended up being made, but it was canceled at the last minute. Only a short pilot film was ever made. Actress Polly Bergen was cast as the show’s series character.
https://www.tvobscurities.com/articles/selena_mead/
June 7th, 2025 at 1:41 am
I was a big fan of the Selena Mead stories and later of McGerr period, but I maintain a special place for the Mead stories, the shorter ones often appearing in the Sunday Supplement THIS WEEK. She’s somewhere between Evelyn Anthony’s Davinia Graham and a younger sexy Mrs. Pollifax and the puzzle element or at least how she outwits the enemy is never neglected merely for melodrama.
The novel is an excellent slender piece of international intrigue, but Mr. Mead clearly deserved more.
June 7th, 2025 at 8:16 pm
Ha! He surely did.
June 13th, 2025 at 11:55 pm
As Steve points out, a collection of Mead short stories was disguised as a novel. This is “Legacy of Danger”.
Match Point forms much of chapters 1 to 3 of that book. These chapters also have new material not in Match Point.
I enjoyed this review!
June 14th, 2025 at 3:07 pm
Mike, Thanks for the information about “Match Point.” I’ve added it to the information a the top of the review, It makes sense that it is basis of the first three chapters of the book, since in essence it is the “origin” of Selena Mead.
June 14th, 2025 at 12:13 am
The Selena Mead novel Steve and David mention:
Is There a Traitor in the House?
As far as I know, this is not based on any of the Mead short stories.
June 15th, 2025 at 3:36 am
Mike E Grost I can confirm the novel is not based on the stories though it does contain Selena’s boss and sort of romantic interest who appears off and on in the series with her (Hugh Westland I think, friend of her husband and the guy who recruited her).
It’s one of those he loves her but is too honorable to say anything because her husband was his best friend, and she needs time sub plots, the usual ‘will-they-or-won’t-they’ thing. As I recall the novel is the most space the relationship ever got and they still didn’t.
It’s a slender book as I recall, maybe 60K though as I recall fairly small type. The cover was a great McGinnis portrait of Selena and the plot was mostly sat around DC and environs literally about a possible traitor in the House (though I think it is a Senator).
Popular Library I think, I never saw the hardcover.
I would love to read the series again, they were light and fun, and with Michael Gilbert’s Calder and Behrens and Ed Hoch’s Rand one of the few short spy series of the period (Garfield’s Charlie Dark came just a bit later).
Even today you have to stretch some definitions to do a very long spy short anthology and some of the greats like Ambler and Greene never really wrote short spy stories. Of course there is always a Holmes, often a Hewett, only one LeQueux is ever deemed fit for reprint, only one of the Bulldog Drummond shorts vaguely fits (“Thirteen Lead Soldiers”), Maugham of course and one of Buchan’s from RUNGATES CLUB (but not with Hannay or Leithen), a couple of good Saint outings though the best one is a novella, given the work I could probably dig up a Peter Cheyney worth reprinting though not a Callgahan or Caution, a Wheatley, and there is one oft reprinted Household, there may be a Clubfoot and probably a Rohmer, but modern era they get rarer and rarer. Fleming of course, the above mentioned, maybe a Peter O’Donnell Modesty Blaise short, none of Forsyth’s fit well and the one that does is a bit long, there is at least one Le Carre (non Smiley), an Avallone or two and a John Jakes to choose from, while some of today’s thriller writers have done some shorts the spy writers haven’t as much. Almost all the best Spy Story anthologies (and there are only about six or seven mostly reprinting the same stories) get creative about what they call a spy story.
As I said, you have to get creative what you call a spy story.