Edward Hannibal

I only recently learned that Edward Hannibal's fine novel about the Cold War, A TRACE OF RED, is back in print after thirty years. Probably many younger people today know little about that nearly fifty-year standoff between the USA and the USSR, two of the most powerful nations of the world. Espionage on both sides was a big part of those tense times, and Hannibal's novel gives you a good dose of how it all worked, with tunnels under Berlin, romantic and sexual intrigue (and entrapment), double agents and the stealing of military secrets. Protagonist Nick Urkbay (oops, I mean Burke), a former military intel officer (in the early sixties) is recruited nearly twenty years later by a former colleague to "eliminate" a double agent who, under the thumb of his Soviet handlers, has become gradually unhinged, representing a serious threat not only to national security but to nearly everyone around him. Burke, whose Madison Avenue advertising career is collapsing, and is romantically involved with beautiful model, Deborah Ormay (think that pig-Latin again here), must make a hard choice about whether to "accept the mission" (shades of "Mission Impossible"). What he will decide remains elusive right up to the end of this fast-moving story. The conclusion itself, unfortunatley, seemed just a little too Hollywood Technicolor kinda stuff. But maybe that was just me.

The best part of A TRACE OF RED was the character, Nick Burke. The story is told through a mix of flashbacks to Nick's army days in Germany (early 60s) and present-day New York City (early 80s). Hannibal, who served in the army as an intelligence officer himself, paints an accurate and fascinating picture of the war games and office politics and striving that characterizes career-type military - i.e. "lifers" in the parlance of enlisted personnel. He lived it and he knows how it works. He also understands the very close camaraderie that develops between "army buddies" and illustrates it very effectively in the relationship between Burke and his best friend, Joel Kelsey. The two go through stateside training together and then are posted together to "Baker Barracks" in southern Germany, and take part in the war games in the Grafenwoehr training area.

The book's title is a line from "Mack the Knife," a song popularized by Bobby Darin, and it forms a recurring motif throughout the novel, not only with its bloody intimations, but also in showing the importance that music played as a soundtrack to our lives back in those days. Darin's now classic LP, THAT's ALL, was perhaps one of the most perfect big band jazz albums of the sixties, with tracks bookended by the aforementioned edgy "Mack the Knife" and the dreamy "Beyond the Sea." I had that album myself, and, like Nick Burke, I played it damn near to death.

Yeah, I really enjoyed reading A TRACE OF RED and am grateful that AuthorsGuild/iUniverse has reissued it in such a handsome paperback edition. For those who weren't there and don't remember it, open up the cover, put on some old 60s music, and welcome to the Cold War era.

And P.S. If you enjoy this book and haven't yet had the pleasure, be sure to pick up a copy of Hannibal's terrific 70s besteller, CHOCOLATE DAYS, POPSICLE WEEKS, which is also back in print and most deservedly so. It hasn't lost a thing in the intervening 40-plus years. Still relevant, still an emotionally wrenching and beautiful read about what it was like to be young, in love, and reaching for that brass ring of success. I have RE-read it, reviewed it, and recommended it highly.… (mais)

I read this book in grad school at Central Michigan when I should have been doing a term paper for my World Lit class. I found Fitzie so much more interesting that Sophocles and Euripides. I remember very little about the Greek dramas I studied that term, but I have great memories of Chocolate Days. It oughta still be in print, if only as an historical record of how it was in 1970 - back when I was young, in love, newly married with a little boy to brighten my days. Where are you, Edward Hannibal? Write me, okay? (March 3, 2009)

Well, okay! It's 11 months later. Hannibal has personally republished Chocolate Days. I wrote him a letter and he WROTE BACK! I recently bought the new Authors Guild Press edition of the book and have just finished reading it. It is still a 5-star read forty years later, no question. If you want to know how it was back in the turbulent times that were the 1960s then here is a book for you to read. Fitzie and Janice were, I believe, eminently representative of young marrieds who came from working class blue-collar backgrounds. Fitzie worked his way through Boston College - nights and weekends at an ice cream and popsicle plant (hence the title) - married his high school sweetheart Janice, took an ROTC commission and did his time in the army and saw a bit of Europe. Then he dove into the advertising game in the Big Apple, trying to escape his Boston Irish background. But that "good Catholic boy" was always there, lurking inside his head, the nuns and Jesuits who had educated him, whispering in his ear about sin and evil and all that other nastiness.

Here's the thing though. Reading CD,PW again in 2010 seemed, in many ways, a totally different experience from reading it in 1970. It seemed richer and even better than the first time. The only explanation for this is, I suppose, that perspective, that hindsight, that an additional forty years gives you. In those intervening years my own marriage has gone through some tough times, all my kids have grown up, and I have lost a brother and a father. Fitzie is only thirty years old at the conclusion of Chocolate Days, Popsicle Weeks, but he has already gone through some trying times in his marriage and known the pressure that work-home conflicts can bring. He is beginning to see how hard and complicated life can be.

Towards the end of the narrative, Fitzie is attending the funeral of his mother, struck down by a sudden heart attack before she was fifty. He realizes, as he tries to comfort his grieving father how little he knows of his parents' life, but in watching his father he makes an even more important discovery: "... that all a man can really have is another to love and to love him, and for that other to be boxed and lowered into a hole in the earth forever is a terrible thing to happen."

Fitzie knows plenty by the conclusion of this novel, but he's still got a lot to learn. But you get a real sense, as you close this book, that he and Janice are going to make it, that this marriage will survive. And it's a good feeling. I loved this book when I read it at 26. At 66 I loved it even more. Thanks for bringing it back, Ed. I hope our kids and grandkids will discover this book. There are some very important lessons to be learned from it. (February 20, 2010)… (mais)