Tim Powers's Declare is a superbly written novel about espionage and the men (and women) who are obsessed about it. It begins in 1963 when a middle-aged English academic, Andrew Hale, receives a phone call composed in a beautifully surreal code:

From the telephone a man's accentless voice said, "Here's a list: Chaucer...Malory..."

Hale's face was suddenly chilly.

The voice went on. "Wyatt...Spenser..."

Hale had automatically started counting, and Spenser made four. "I imagine so," he said hastily and at random. "Uh, 'which being dead many years, shall after revive,' is the bit you're thinking of. It's Shakespeare, actually, Mr.--...Fonebone," he finished lamely....

"Shakespeare," said the man's careful voice, and Hale realized that he should have phrased his response for more apparent continuity. "Oh well. Five pounds, was it? I can pay you at lunch."

For a moment neither of them spoke.

"Lunch," Hale said with no inflection. What is it supposed to be now, he thought, a contrary and then a parallel or example. "Better than fasting, a--uh--sandwich would be." Good Lord.

That call summons Hale back into the Great Game, as Kipling described the intricate web of espionage set up after the world wars. Declare perfectly captures the seductive peril of spycraft: the constant threat of exposure, the amoral code of conduct, the ingenious and musical patois of codespeak. Because it's Powers, the supernatural eventually finds its way into the narrative, but Powers introduces it so subtly that the fantastical seems oddly familiar when it first manifests. Besides, the world of espionage is itself so strange that it is almost comforting when something truly weird finally emerges from the desert.

Declare takes place during a specific period of history: from the middle of World War II to the beginnings of the Cold War. The book is exhaustively researched. Hale jets from England to France to the unquiet deserts of the Middle East, with radios and guns and camels, and through it all Powers maintains a seamless web of details on a stupendous number of topics: the operation of wireless radio, the equipment of mountaineers, the nomadic habits of the Bedu. Declare's rich background is enthralling stuff.

Unfortunately, for all its absorbing background, Declare has a weak plot. The book moves ponderously through two different storylines: one in 1945, and one in 1963. It quickly becomes apparent that Powers doesn't have quite enough plot to fill both storylines; the 1963 plotline is filled with redundancies as Hale either thinks back on an earlier 1945 chapter or foreshadows an event that will be more fully fleshed out later in the book. Both storylines culminate in a conflagration on Mount Ararat, the mystical peak where Noah's Ark supposedly beached itself, but the progress from start to finish is as straightforward as they come. For a man who has written devilishly complicated books in the past, Declare is disappointingly plain.

The problem, I think, is that Powers boxed himself in by insisting on using historical characters and, indeed, basing his entire book around the strange lacunae peppering the life of Kim Philby, the English spy-turned-Soviet-traitor. Because part of the purpose of Declare is to make sense of the more curious events in Philby's life (the shocking murder of his pet fox, for instance), the narrative sometimes has to chug tediously through gaps where Philby didn't really do anything too odd.

But it's not all Philby's fault. Sometimes I think Powers fell too madly in love with the setting and with the Great Game itself. Nothing else could account for lengthy passages where Powers, say, gorgeously describes the desert while Hale literally ruminates in his camel seat.

But then, the setting and the game are the best parts of Declare. I suppose you can't fault Powers for dwelling on them.

Copyright © 2005 Steven Wu