Luckypenny

This satirical novel, published in 1937, is largely set in London with scenes in France, Italy and Spain. With elements of the Eric Ambler thrillers (in which an ordinary man takes on the role of secret agent or detective), this novel features James Luckypenny, a lowly accounts clerk in an English firm that manufactures armaments. When he urgently needs a pay rise, he makes a deal with his boss to go to Italy, obtain the firm’s funds that are trapped in an Italian subsidiary (Mussolini had banned the removal of money from the country) and smuggle it back to England in his artificial leg (the result of a war injury). The success of the mission is brought about by a romantic liaison with Zenaida, a high-ranking Fascist agent, and the two meet again in Barcelona towards the end of the novel during the early stages of civil war.

The author, Bruce Marshall (born 24 June 1899), grew up in Edinburgh. He served in the First World War initially as a private in the Highland Light Infantry and then as a second lieutenant in the Royal Irish Fusiliers. In early November 1918, he was severely wounded on the Western Front. He was rescued by a German medical orderlies and taken prisoner. His injury (as in the case of the central character of this novel) resulted in a leg amputation. He was invalided out of the army in 1920 and resumed his education at the University of St Andrews. His first collection of short stories was written while a student there. After graduation, he worked as an accountant while setting out on a part-time writing career. His first novel was published in 1924. He summed up his reputation in his two spheres of work: “I am an accountant who writes books. In accounting circles I am hailed as a great writer. Among novelists I am assumed to be a competent accountant.” After the Second World War, he settled in France and committed himself to a full-time literary career. he went on to write numerous works of fiction as well as an acclaimed biography of F.F.E. Yeo-Thomas, a British agent in the Second World War, who, like the author, lived in France after the war.

The author, presumably from experience, writes about the central character’s loss of reputation and self-esteem in the years following the war:
“Immediately after the war, Luckypenny... out of uniform, had ceased to be a person of consequence. Ten years after the war, Luckypenny had [looked back towards] the war, remembering its humours and comradeships, and forgetting its horrors. Fifteen years after the war, Luckypenny quite frankly desired war, with all its mud and cold and pain; he wanted to be somebody again, but above all he wanted to do something that he knew was worth doing...”