The Jewish Conspiracy
The Jewish Conspiracy plays a big part in this spy novel about Germany—and it’s set during the First World War! That fact alone should give you some indication of the state of things that allowed there to be a Second World War with Germany at the center of the threat:
"if you’re on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake."
"it is all pure Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle"
Arthur Conan Doyle, of course, is the inventor of Sherlock Holmes. H. Rider Haggard is the author of novels that influenced Raiders of the Lost Ark. Near the beginning of the novel, one man relates an exciting tale to another to which the other compares what he has just heard as being something like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and King’s Solomon’s Mines. To put it mildly, he is somewhat impressed.
Character Description
Buchan demonstrates a true mastery of metaphorical language when it comes to delineating character. Previously, the narrator had expressed the view that a certain plump little man seemed benevolent. Later, he actually wonders in narration where the benevolence could possibly have been when the man shows his true character:
"He was sheer brain, icy, cool, calculating, as ruthless as a steam hammer...His jaw was like chilled steel, and his eyes had the inhuman luminosity of a bird’s."
A Touch of Humor
In addition to revealing much about another character, his use of metaphor is also used for humor when appropriate. The following example not only gives insight into the other person, but expands upon the character of the narrator:
"He had about as much gift of the gab as a hippopotamus, and was not a great hand at valeting, but I knew I could count on his loyalty."
The Politics of Narration
After listening to a speech about how the so-called “German menace” was just an elaborate Tory invention designed expressly for the purposes of economic exploitation, the political leanings of the narrator are made abundantly clear through his immediate unexpressed review of what he has just heard:
"You could see the niceness of the chap shining out behind the muck with which he had been spoon-fed."
