Col. George Picquart, Dreyfus and Robert Harris

It is not often that I get so gripped by a novel that I can't put it down, or can't get back to it fast enough, but this was my response to An Officer and a Spy, the latest book by  best-selling author, Robert Harris. Robert Harris writes thrillers, and in the previous book of his I have read, Archangel, there was too much story, too many wild chases and gun fights, and characters were there only to hang a fast moving story line on. But An Officer and a Spy is a real life, true thriller. Robert Harris didn't have to make up the story, the story presented itself in the life and career of Col. George Picquart, head of the French counter-intelligence unit, charged with keeping an eye on the Dreyfus family to make sure that these Jews don't get up to mischief and destroy the honour of the French army. In the course of his surveillance he comes across evidence that there is a German spy operating within the ranks of the army, and he identifies this as Capt. Eszterhazy, a dissolute army officer with a dubious reputation. He refers the matter to his superiors, who order him to desist from further investigation, but he believes that a great injustice had been perpetrated in condemning Dreyfus on the strength of a forged document, largely because he was a Jew. Picquart can't leave the matter alone, he had to ensure that justice was done, and Dreyfus, and innocent man, was rehabilitated. In refusing to follow the orders of his superiors, Picquart presented a sharp contrast to his colleague, Major Henry, in the counter-intelligence unit. Henry said that if he was ordered to shoot he would shoot, and ask no questions. Picquart was persecuted by the army for refusing to follow orders, relieved from his post on the General Staff, exiled to North Africa, where his life was deliberately endangered, and ultimately he was imprisoned on trumped up charges of forgery. His part in the Dreyfus affair divided French society, with the diehard, conservative antisemites on one side and the liberal Dreyfusards on the other. Although he did not set out to write a novel with a contemporary message, Robert Harris sees parallels between the stance of the French Army at the end of the 1890s and present day treatment of whistle blowers, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assannge, who are all harassed because they had revealed embarrassing inconvenient material about various administrations that they served.