Aleister Crowley MI6: the Hess Solution

31st October 2023
Isbn 9781914153204 
Hardback 266pp £25/$32

Mandrake of Oxford

(Circa 70,000 words)

You can pluck someone like an instrument if you know the way to tune their heart.

May 1941, Ian Fleming of Naval Intelligence recruits Aleister Crowley to crack the recently captured Rudolf Hess by exploiting their mutual fascination with the occult. To fill in the background to Hess’s disastrous flight, Fleming provides the diary of Albrecht Haushofer, the deputy Führer’s assistant. 1945 finds Crowley in a boarding house in Hastings where he tutors Will, a fledgling priest, in Latin. The victim of a Soviet honey trap, Will steals a file that reveals the devastating consequences of Crowley’s mission and discovers the true identities of the Reception Committee waiting for Hess in Scotland. Is the file genuine or a black-ops fake concocted by British Intelligence? Can a crazed rocket scientist in California supply the answer, or ‘M’, the Beast’s controller? Featuring Dion Fortune, Anthony Blunt, Hitler, Jack Parsons, and two Beatles, Aleister Crowley MI6 is a riveting spy thriller anchored in fact.

A highly recommended (and highly unusual) irreverent romp through our recent past. Fun guaranteed.

Robert Nurden (author of I Always Wanted To Be A Dad)

A Brilliantly Researched & Engrossing Novel

McNeff’s now well-established narrative expertise superbly melds fact with fiction in this extraordinary tale of war-politics, espionage, and the occult. The central character (and what a cast it is!), Aleister Crowley, is superlatively brought to life – on the one hand, half-crazed, deceitful, oppressive; on the other, remarkably erudite, surprisingly sensitive, and wickedly funny. The detail with which McNeff conjures the rigours of post-war England betokens a great deal of meticulous research. A fine novel, and a great read.

Eamonn Shanahan

In FT408 I reviewed Richard C McNeff’s novel Aleister Crowley MI5. Now he’s back with Aleister Crowley MI6: The Hess Solution. Crowley is living out his last years in the Netherwood guesthouse in Hastings, impoverished and drug-addicted, but still a figure of fascination. He’s teaching Latin to Will, a young lad who works at the guesthouse, who wants to become a priest – and Crowley tells him about a manuscript he has that must be saved: the Z File, purportedly the diary of a German with close connections to Rudolf Hess. The novel begins with Hess’s ill-fated flight to Scotland, which is still shrouded in mystery even today. There are extracts from the diary, and scenes of intelligence meetings which may or may not have happened in reality – this is, after all, a novel. And it’s a star-studded book: among the many characters making a sometimes brief appearance are Lady Frieda Harris (the artist of Crowley’s Book of Thoth Tarot), occultist Dion Fortune, Ian Fleming, Anthony Blunt, Maxwell Knight (M), Jack Parsons and Cameron – and even two of the Beatles, high on LSD in a fun scene in a London club. Unlike Aleister Crowley MI5, which followed Crowley and a bunch of his associates from pub to club over 24 hours in a continuous narrative, this one leaps around in place and time, between Hastings and Scotland and Germany and Los Angeles and London, and between Crowley in the late 1940s, secretive events in the 1930s, LA in the 1950s and London in the Swinging Sixties. It’s sometimes difficult to keep track of it all, and how much of it, if any, is based in historical truth, who knows? But it’s a fun ride.

David V Barrett (review in Fortean Times)

Aleister Crowley as himself in all his occult and charismatic glory – a manipulative, overbearing, bizarre yet compelling character. Fiction could hardly have invented him: he is a gift of a character to any novelist & Richard C McNeff has accepted him, unwrapped the parcel and given him his head. —Martin Booth (author of Crowley biography A Magick Life – on Aleister Crowley MI5).