The Torqued Man (2022)
By Peter Mann
HarperCollins, 384 pages
★★★★
If you enjoy wartime thrillers, try The Torqued Man, the debut novel of Stanford history lecturer Peter Mann. To raise a glass to my own profession, there’s nothing like a historian to add detail to what would otherwise be a mere chronicle.
The main character is Frank Pike, based loosely on the biography of Frank Ryan. He has been around, though most of the novel takes place in an around Berlin during World War II. Pike has been inside jails in Ireland for his Irish Republican Army (IRA) activities and in Spain after the losing crusade to prevent the reign to Francisco Franco’s fascist-like Falangist movement. Spain is where Abwehr official Johann Grotius–code name Adrian De Groot–finds Pike. (He is an adaptation of Kurt Hälker.)
The key to understanding Mann’s novel is to know that Mann has grounded the novel in real circumstances. De Groot officially springs Frank Pike from a Spanish prison to help Nazi Germany recruit Ireland as an ally and a possible base for invading England. That effort–called Operation Green–was a real proposal. It didn’t happen because the new Irish Republic lacked stability and sufficient defenses, and Northern Ireland was part of Great Britain. Both Irelands remained neutral during the war, but if the German navy couldn’t cross the English Channel during the war, the Irish Sea would have been a logistical nightmare. Of course, such realities were clear only in retrospect.
Understanding a bit about the Abwehr is also key. If you were a citizen or live somewhere occupied by Germany, you rightly feared the Gestapo. Yet, the Gestapo was the domestic secret police; the Abwehr was a military intelligence agency. In the grand scheme of things, the less-discussed Abwehr had greater power as it controlled spy operations. De Groot is, at best, a reluctant Nazi; in truth, he kept his mouth shut about his views and assumed his position to protect himself. The Abwehr had others like him whose loyalty was “soft.” Mann’s take on internal opposition to Hitler isn’t 100% accurate, but there was indeed a large internal plot to kill Hitler in July 1944.
Mann’s novel fascinates because both Pike and De Groot are slippery characters. Pike is pansexual with big appetites for all things sensual. His character is deeply informed by Finn McCool, a hero in Irish mythology who performed deeds of strength and cunning. Like McCool, Pike is filled with energy, bravado, ego, and recklessness. He is the novel’s titular torqued man full of twists, intensity, and shifting agendas.
De Groot falls in love (lust?) with Pike. Although it’s probably untrue that many high German officers were gay, some were. Discretion, of course, was necessary. Put all of this together and add personal backstories, wild children, the horrors of wartime Berlin, turf wars, “vitamin” shots, murder of doctors, necessary (and unnecessary) sacrifices, and Finn/Pike’s hidden journal and what it adds up to is deliciously ambiguous. After all, should we trust anything connected to Pike. Don’t blame yourself if can’t always unravel who is playing who. The Torqued Man is like John Le Carré meets Irish mythology– thus a blend of truth, storytelling, and literary license.
The only thing that mars Mann’s novel is what I would dub a scholar’s mistake. During his studies he encountered Frank Ryan and the Connolly Column (Irish volunteers during the Spanish Civil War), but decided that material would work better as a novel. I agree, but there’s an inherent danger when one gets too close to the research; namely, it’s easy to think that what you know is common knowledge. Given that he wrote a piece of fiction in English, it would have helped immensely had he translated German military terms and key vocabulary. I assure you, though, that even if your German doesn’t extend beyond wiener schnitzel a wade through The Torqued Man is an exciting journey.
Rob Weir
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