Linda's Reviews > An Officer and a Spy

An Officer and a Spy is an outstanding historical fiction/ thriller. It provides a historically accurate account of the Dreyfus Affair, the espionage case that ripped apart fin de siecle France. Author Robert Harris selected Lieutenant Colonel George Piquart as his protagonist and chronicled the events which led to his altering his belief in Alfred Dreyfus' guilt.

On October 15, 1894, 35-year-old Alfred Dreyfus, an artillery officer in the French army, was arrested for high treason, spying, and passing on classified information to the Germans. He was tried and convicted on very flimsy evidence and sentenced to life in solitary confinement on Devil's Island, a remote outpost off the coast of Venezuela.

Dreyfus was Jewish and the first "outsider" to rise in the ranks of the French military. According to New York Times reviewer Louis Begley, the military had just introduced merit-based appointments a few years earlier, and many of the anti-semitic general staff were less than pleased to have Dreyfus among them. So when evidence emerged that there was a traitor passing secrets to the Germans, they suspected Dreyfus.

The top generals saw Picquart as a good old boy who shared their prejudices. He initially believed in Dreyfus's guilt and received a promotion to the head of army counter-intelligence as a reward for his role in Dreyfus's court-martial. Ironically, this promotion placed him in the position to learn that the wrong man had been tried and convicted. Yet, despite his prejudices, Piquart was an honorable man who felt that it was his duty to free the innocent Dreyfus and put the real spy Officer Esterhazy in prison.

Robert Harris is a master storyteller. He gradually builds tension and subtly shows Piquart's growing disillusionment, adding evidence and depicting the harrowing events that led the military command to harass and prosecute Piquart and defend the honor of the real spy.
Harris captures the polarization within French society and the rabid anti-Semitism of those who clung to their belief in Dreyfus's guilt, despite all evidence to the contrary.

An Officer and a Spy takes the reader on a suspenseful roller coaster ride that is all the more powerful because it is true. I highly recommend it.