Winter in Madrid

ENGLAND'S enduring class system can be aptly summed up in two words: public school. Those who attend English public schools in reality expensive private schools inherit a kind of right to rule. They learn how to survive in a world no less riven by competition and cruelty than society itself. After graduating, they can forever recognize one another. Even those who rebel are shaped by the experience. To be an English public schoolboy yes, most are still boys is to belong to a caste. The repressed power of this identity creates the narrative undercurrent of C.J. Sansom's new political thriller, "Winter in Madrid." The winter in question is that of 194041. With much of Europe under the Nazi boot and Britain wounded and isolated, neutral Spain is considering its options. General Franco, the Fascist victor in Spain's recently concluded civil war, identifies with Hitler and Mussolini, but Churchill hopes to deter him from joining the Axis. Harry Brett, Sandy Forsyth and Bernie Piper are peripheral players in the broader political drama, linked by the fact that in the late 1920s they were fellow pupils at Rookwood, an English public school. Indeed, their experiences there as teenagers Harry got on well with Sandy and Bernie, who in turn detested each other determines what follows a decade or so later. When their paths cross in Spain, the past is inevitably present. At Rookwood, Harry was the only one who didn't have trouble fitting in: Sandy, estranged from his Anglican bishop father, was eventually expelled for bad behavior, while Bernie, a grocer's son attending Rookwood on a scholarship, embraced socialism. For a while, Harry stayed in touch with both, traveling to Spain with Bernie in 1931 and returning there six years later after Bernie went missing while fighting with Communist volunteers against Franco's nationalist forces. It was also then that Harry met Piper's girlfriend, a Red Cross worker named Barbara Clare. Sansom, a British lawyerturnedwriter, fills in this background through flashbacks, providing a potted history of Spain's descent into civil war. He also offers a taste of the hardship and fear gripping Madrid under its new Fascist dictator. Yet just as Hollywood prefers to place Englishspeaking heroes in movies set in foreign lands, Sansom tells his story through people like us. Franco "with his balding head, double chin and little graying mustache" makes a cameo appearance, but most of the Spaniards in "Winter in Madrid" are little more than extras to the Britons. Harry Brett is recruited by British intelligence, which hopes to use his Rookwood connection to discover what shady business Sandy is up to in Madrid, specifically whether his company has found gold reserves that will strengthen Franco's hand. Harry pretends to bump into Sandy in a cafe, and their old school days promptly return. "You were always a Rookwood man to your fingertips," Sandy teases. "Always followed the rules." More of a surprise for Harry is that Barbara, whom he last saw mourning Bernie, is now living in comfort with Sandy. But her quiet life is disrupted when she learns from a journalist that some foreigners including, perhaps, Bernie are among the Republican prisoners being held in a secret concentration camp. Suddenly her loyalties shift: determined to obtain Bernie's freedom, she now sees Sandy as a repulsive, corrupt cynic. It doesn't help when he takes up with their Spanish maid. ("I suppose it's a fantasy, a public school thing," Barbara concludes.) Having won Sandy's confidence, Harry has much to report to his old Etonian handler in the British Embassy, itself headed at the time (this bit is true) by Sir Samuel Hoare, an irascible codger who does a fair amount of moaning about "Winston." Harry also finds time to fall in love with Sofia, a beautiful young Spaniard whose brother, assigned to spy on him, Harry somewhat implausibly saves from a pack of wild dogs. A few twists and turns later, Sofia will join Harry and Barbara when they set off to rescue Bernie. A best seller in Britain, "Winter in Madrid" prompted some reviewers there to compare Sansom to Graham Greene, Sebastian Faulks and even Hemingway, but I came away less convinced. The idea of transferring public school rivalries to a real battleground is certainly clever, but more introspection would have been welcome. Without the compensation of rich language, the novel's formulaic structure becomes all too visible. True, Sansom has come up with a surprise ending, but that's what you expect of a thriller. The problem is that there aren't enough thrills in the chapters leading up to it. Alan Riding, the former European cultural correspondent of The Times, is a coauthor of "Opera."