Robert L. Duncan

• Born: September 9, 1927
• Birthplace: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
• Died: January 28, 1999
• Place of death: Norman, Oklahoma

Type of Plot: Espionage

Contribution

Robert L. Duncan, who sometimes used the pseudonym James Hall Roberts, wrote a new kind of spy novel, one in the tradition of John le Carré and Graham Greene, but different in its focus on international conspiracies that a persistent individual can undo. His recurrent message is that, despite seemingly impossible odds, a determined, resilient man with the courage of his convictions and a sense of right can make a difference in today’s world. His strengths are his expertise in Far Eastern history, politics, psychology, and culture, and his willingness to break traditional molds. The Q Document (1964), for example, is unique in its application of New Testament studies and scholarship on the deciphering of ancient manuscripts to an intriguing thriller plot. Duncan’s novels are regularly published in Great Britain, France, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, West Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Japan, and South America.

Biography

Born on September 9, 1927, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the son of Norman Duncan (an attorney) and Eva Pearl (Hall) Duncan, Robert Lipscomb Duncan was married to Wanda Scott, a writer, on April 12, 1949. He received his bachelor of arts degree in 1950 and his master of arts degree in 1972, both from the University of Oklahoma. While attending school he began his career as a writer, but he also worked as a lecturer in television writing at the University of California, Irvine, between 1967 and 1968; a coordinator of a seminar in business aspects of the arts from 1969 to 1970; and a writer-in-residence at Chapman College in Orange, California. Teaching professional writing part-time at various universities gave Duncan the satisfaction of passing on practical advice about the craft and about marketing, though he decided that writing per se and a love of language and order cannot be taught. From 1972 to 1980, he was an associate professor of journalism at the University of Oklahoma School of Professional Writing.

Duncan said that he knew he wanted to be a novelist and nothing else when he read Ellery Queen at the age of twelve and that realizing that dream allowed him to indulge his curiosity about the world and to travel extensively. He went on book promotion tours in New Zealand and Australia, visited the South Pacific, and did research in Denpasar, Bali; Jakarta; Bangkok; and Moscow. He thought of himself as more an “international writer than an American” and used his writings “as a way of affirming the conviction that individual belief, translated into action, can be effective in solving some of the problems of the world which, on first glance, seem beyond solution.” His method was first to engage in travel and research, then to allow a gestation period for sorting out his impressions. He found that, given a bit of time, characters and situations begin to form; he got glimpses of scenes and flashes of dialogue until these nebulous elements finally coalesced into a solid story. Sometimes he toyed with an idea for more than forty years, as he did with China Dawn (1988).

Analysis

Robert L. Duncan’s novels are marked by convincing, highly detailed backgrounds, with Tokyo and resort areas in Japan a favorite, but all the Far East is familiar territory in his novels. In the Enemy Camp (1985), for example, focuses on Indonesia, its people, its politics, its past, and its present struggles. The exotic music of the gamelan, the intricately staged Balinese dance, and the lush tropical villas of the rich are set against the dangerous alleyways of Jakarta and the pencak silat fighters battling over bets. In The Queen’s Messenger (1982), the action ranges from the jungles of Thailand to the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator, from Hong Kong and Bangkok to the London offices of the British intelligence service, and involves Thai police, American deserters from the Vietnam War era, Britishers gone native, and a rogue agent driven by nightmarish memories of Russian-paid Thai torturers. The hero in Brimstone (1980), in contrast, remains in the United States but flees cross-country, frequently switching cars and planes, from Pennsylvania to Nebraska, from California to Nevada, experiencing the flavor of each on his way.

Such movement allows for what Duncan says he finds most exciting: the clash of cultures. A majority of his novels involve the collision of different groups, whether members of contrasting nations or of competing cultures within one nation, such as humanists versus militarists or professional intelligence operatives. These clashes may be minor, for the sake of characterization or background information: a working-class midwesterner’s sense of inferiority and clumsiness in the face of the “snobbish grace” of San Francisco’s urbane and mannered executives; the unbridgeable gap between a twenty-year-old sex queen and her middle-aged sugar daddy; the contrast between Amish traditionalists and their modern neighbors. The clashes may also be central to the action and to the message, as is the conflict between civilian and military values in The Day the Sun Fell (1970), The February Plan (1967), and Brimstone, or that between Western and Asian logic in The Day the Sun Fell, The Queen’s Messenger, Fire Storm (1978), and China Dawn. The military logic usually involves well-intended ends but monstrous means: plots by high-level superpatriots to assure political stability or peace by using nuclear or neutron bombs. In contrast, Asian logic seems clear at first but then proves inscrutable, an illusion shielding an illusion. The hero of Fire Storm, for example, has worked in Asia for years, but he admits that he does not and never will understand the Japanese mind; he might be able to project with some accuracy what the Japanese might do, but he will never understand why they would do it. The Japanese highway system with its real police interspersed amid numerous police mannequins baffles him, as do the taxi drivers who never pay attention to addresses, and the justice system, which builds on illusion and indirection. One Japanese police inspector, who later proves corruptible, defends his system as complex and difficult for Westerners to understand but still capable of “a high batting average.” The attempt of representatives from different cultures and different value systems to understand one another’s minds and emotions, nevertheless remaining continually at odds in niggling ways, is a mainstay of Duncan’s canon.

In Temple Dogs, as in so many of Duncan’s novels, a key feature is the conflict between a single individual and the organization. In Fire Storm, another big-business novel, a Japanese port is deliberately incinerated as part of an international plot, and the American shipbuilding executive who witnesses the destruction finds himself forced to battle both corrupt Japanese officials and his own former associates. In Brimstone, a computer technician accidentally calls up maps of Russian towns, part of project Brimstone, a secret operation connected with the missing eighteen-minute segment of Richard Nixon’s White House tapes, and finds himself caught up in an ongoing military conspiracy. In The Dragons at the Gate, an honest operative in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) struggles to avoid being sacrificed by his own apparatus to assure the economic dominance of the United States. Despite imprisonment and interrogation, he ultimately forces the CIA to cancel a morally repugnant operation. This ability of one individual to make a difference in an overwhelmingly corrupt world accounts in large part for the appeal of Duncan’s novels.

At times Duncan’s descriptions border on the satiric, especially when they relates to the villains: the military “hawk” whose technical expertise exists “only in the phenomenal work of the legislative aide who wrote speeches for him,” the urbane and internationally respected British lord who conspires with terrorists, the references to genuine military and intelligence operations such as experiments with LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) in the 1960’s, and the military focus on “gamesmanship” as real events transpire. One hero, in disgust, postulates that this is “the age of the accountants” and that the true autocrat is that “watchdog of the watchdogs,” the CIA, while others declaim against those who refuse to get involved, whether the bureaucrats who allow decisions by default or the ordinary citizen who lacks compassion or a sense of patriotic duty. Duncan clearly believes that the world has changed for the worse. His villains are often figures reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove, yet carefully grounded in real events and real personages. The novels tend to build on problems that were major moral and social concerns when they were written: for example, bribery of Japanese businessmen by American corporations in Temple Dogs (1977), written shortly after the actual scandals.

Loners as Heroes

Duncan’s heroes tend to be loners, working for a large organization but always psychologically on the fringe, independent and stubborn in their defense of the right. Sometimes they are troubleshooters for a large multinational company, as in Temple Dogs and Fire Storm. Inevitably they end up struggling against a large, powerful organization—sometimes their own, sometimes one closely related to their own, but always one corrupt at its core. Sometimes they have been set up as scapegoats by their own superiors. These heroes are usually believers in “old-fashioned” values such as honor and loyalty, in contrast to their opponents, who are motivated by self-interest, economic pragmatism, or computer-generated decisions. The hero in The Queen’s Messenger, for example, bears the scars of enemy torture and feels compelled to rescue a captured compatriot from a similar fate.

In spite of the international settings, Duncan’s protagonists have much in common with the traditional hero of the American Western: They are men, neither old nor young, and somewhat alienated from society, especially the society of women. Although intelligent and articulate when the occasion calls for it, they tend toward the taciturn. Like the cowboy hero, they often feel little initial responsibility toward other people, but become involved after suffering repeated indignities at the hands of an arrogant and mechanistic organization. The nastier and more impossible the odds against them, the more stubbornly they pursue their nemesis. They may verbally vacillate, but when it comes to action, they feel as does the hero of Fire Storm, who makes a partial truce with a kamikaze member of a Japanese terrorist group to undermine the enemy behind the enemy, the amoral and murderous corporate heads of several “American” multinational oil companies: “In my own way, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool revolutionary. They’re trying to take over by killing some enemies who I happen to believe are worthwhile people. I mean to change things.” Heroes are accompanied in this battle by strong but often unhappy women, who, compelled by love, loyalty, a sense of right, or a need for truth, join forces with them and find some measure of comfort at the resolution.

Unlike the cowboy hero, Duncan’s protagonists prefer mental weapons to physical ones, using an array of talents that no computer can match. Typically, the hero must decode a cryptic document, a confused set of circumstances or relationships, a puzzling message, or a tape, using scholarly or parascholarly skills. Often, the opposition has concocted an array of forged documents that, taken as a package, seem to constitute absolute proof. Next, the protagonist must make sense of the plot or scheme behind the code, and sometimes his initial interpretation must be revised or modified in the face of new evidence that reveals even subtler possibilities than those first conceived. Sometimes an incongruity of detail or of character sets him on the right track, but both logical conclusions and intuitive insights put him in mortal danger. An extended and exciting chase scene results, with the setting varying from downtown Tokyo to Japanese ski resorts to the American Southwest, and the territory covered ranging from city streets to the entire Pacific Ocean. Duncan liked to set manhunts in resort areas, with the dragnet taking place against pleasant rural vistas, the hero’s agonies invisible to the tourists enjoying the scenery.

Whatever the setting, the hero is always ingenious and unpredictable in his escape strategies, usually foiling the computer-based thoroughness and rationality of his would-be captors. Pamela Marsh of The Christian Science Monitor sums up the typical Duncan action: “Our hair is kept constantly on end as searches, captures, escapes, hunts, follow in rapid series with corpses beginning to accumulate and an inevitable World War III but days away.” The hero must resist the temptation to panic and force himself to use reason against the manhunters’ mechanistic thoroughness. Sometimes, a selfish, spoiled woman abets the escape only to attempt a betrayal, but the hero overcomes this impediment. Sometimes thieves fall out, and he benefits from the results. He may be offered bribes or even his life; he may be “reasoned with” through physical force, psychological pressure, or philosophical debate, but conflict only makes him stronger in his convictions, in contrast to those around him who prove weaker and more yielding. Pressure and the need to become involved transform the hero into a force with which to be reckoned.

Plots and Resolutions

Duncan’s originality resides in his choice of situations and protagonists as well as thematic concerns: In The Q Document, for example, a biblical scholar is caught up in a conspiracy as he investigates documents that purport to show Christianity as based on fraudulence and false prophets. In The Burning Sky (1966), Evan Cummings, a field anthropologist working in the Arizona desert, must find a colleague missing in no-man’s-land and in the process searches for Indian ruins that other scholars have rejected as fantasy. Duncan’s later works adhere more closely to the conventions of the detective genre but remain unique in focus and in control of setting. Newgate Callendar, a critic for The New York Times, points out that a writer as skillful as Duncan can use “the most conventional of materials” and still devise fresh and intriguing plots: In Temple Dogs, a retired American general depends on assassination, blackmail, terrorism, and the threat of war to protect his Far Eastern corporate interests while the protagonist works to expose him and undermine his activities.

Duncan favored neat conclusions, with all plot strands satisfactorily resolved. Moreover, these resolutions usually provide the reader with an intellectually satisfying surprise. Emotionally, on the other hand, his novels can be disappointing. There are simply too many characters who refuse to see the facts that confront them, who refuse to become involved with other people, and who are weakened and undone by the powerful machinery of a company or a party. Furthermore, often the innocent prove victims, and the curious suffer for their vice. Sightseers are blown to bits; bystanders get shot. A child dies from a stray bullet, a fishing village bursts into flame, a young girl is butchered to force information from her father, and a friendly cabby is eliminated for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes the hero’s young assistant is killed, as in The Dragons at the Gate (1975) and Temple Dogs. In the psychological thriller In the Blood (1984), several young women are mutilated and murdered simply because their profiles match an image engraved in the mind of a deranged ax murderer; moreover, the author raises questions of innocence, guilt, and personal responsibility as both the psychotic killer and the persistent New York police officer who pursues him through peaceful Pennsylvania Dutch farmland are driven to atone for the sins of their Jewish fathers, one by ritualistic murder, the other by learning to understand and forgive. In like manner The Day the Sun Fell contrasts the cruelty, stubbornness, madness, and humanity of two warring nations as Nagasaki is bombed.

The Serpent’s Mark

The individual, however, is also capable of profound malice. In his last novel, Duncan again singles out an individual for heroic action, this time through the manipulations of a messianic mass murderer—one man against another. The Serpent’s Mark (1989) features Peter Stein, a retired police detective who once specialized in apprehending serial killers and is now a consultant trying to live quietly for the sake of his family’s safety. He is ironically driven out of retirement not by his desire to return to action and find the killer but by the killer’s own determination to roust Stein from inaction. Refusing to be lured or threatened, Stein finally responds to the killer’s baiting when a young girl is kidnapped and tortured. Mutilation and murder follow in rapid repetition as Stein pursues his mad quarry. The killer is finally discovered, but only after numerous innocents and Stein’s own family are placed in grave danger.

Bibliography

Callendar, Newgate. “Crime.” Review of Brimstone, by Robert L. Duncan. The New York Times, November 23, 1980, p. A37. Callendar praises Duncan’s novel, saying that the author makes the events credible and the adventure involved make the novel suitable for filming.

Hitz, Frederick P. The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Hitz, a former inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency, compares fictional accounts of espionage with actual cases. Although Duncan is not mentioned, the book provides an understanding of the genre in which he wrote.

Oliver, Myrna. “Obituaries: Robert Duncan; Novelist, TV Screenwriter.” Los Angeles Times, February 5, 1999, p. 27. Obituary of Duncan notes his mysteries, his writings as James Hall Roberts, his writings with his wife as W. R. Duncan, and his work for television, which included many Westerns.

Priestman, Martin, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. An excellent, all-around trove of information for the reader. Contains a full chapter devoted to the spy novel. Another chapter addresses the thriller.

Williams, Gene. “It’s Murder, They All Write.” Review of The Serpent’s Mark, by Robert L. Duncan. The Plain Dealer, July 22, 1990. Williams reviews several books that he sees as similar to those of Thomas Harris. He finds Duncan’s work memorable and suspenseful but feels he is an inferior writer to Harris.