PETER FELTHAM

Peter Feltham is a sometime agent for the Firm, or MI-6.

He works for a man called the Gaffer doing odd jobs, mostly courier duty. During the War, he had been very good at his job operating behind enemy lines, largely due to his knack with languages, but years later, he had made quite a wreck of his personal life. Which made it odd that the Gaffer would still use him but he did.

After the war, Feltham inherited a small tobacco-shop business until his errant ways cost him that and his first marriage. Then came short career where his flare for languages was used as a language instructor in Alexandria, Egypt, earning him a very small living. He soon married the daughter of the school's owner and that man bankrolled yet another tobacco related business since Feltham had some expertise there. It didn't pay very well, either, and Feltham looked for other ways to augment it. When an appreciable amount of cannabis was found in a shipment he had ordered, he was given a two-year suspended sentence but worse was the fact that his father-in-law took the legal costs out of his salary and then cut it even more as punishment. Then he really needed more money.

It was at that time that the Gaffer came to call. Despite his legal problems, or more likely because of them, the Gaffer offered him a chance to get out from debt. The money was too good not to and besides, the Gaffer threatened to tell the second Missus about the woman Feltham had been seeing on the side.

So now he does the occasional task, not wanting to but needing to for more than one reason.

In the seven books Mr. Mather wrote about spy characters, the two about Feltham were his first and last, an oddity worth noting. While the other two spies, Rees and Wainwright, were better spies, and Feltham was largely a mistake, this series is interesting. The quality aspect of this series is that Mr. Mather did not try to make the character sympathetic, overly inept, or tragically brave-through-it-all. He made him human. Maybe not a very sympathetic human but definitely an interesting one.

The thing I liked about Feltham is that he has a chip on his shoulder from the lousy way life has treated him but has enough grace to be rather embarrassed about it.