Author: Robert Harris | Narrator: David Rintoul
Runtime: 16h 4m | Genre: British Espionage, Historical Fiction, Military, Conspiracy, Paris, Mystery
A newly appointed French counter-intelligence chief discovers evidence that Captain Dreyfus was framed, risking his career and life to challenge a military conspiracy.
Spanning sixteen gripping hours, *An Officer and a Spy* is British historical thriller master Robert Harris’s crowning achievement, winning both the Walter Scott Prize and the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for best thriller of the year. Harris takes the infamous Dreyfus Affair—the scandal that tore French society apart and presaged the totalitarian nightmares of the twentieth century—and reimagines it not merely as a courtroom drama, but as a razor-sharp, modern espionage procedural. The novel opens in January 1895 in the courtyard of the École Militaire in Paris, where Jewish artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus is publicly humiliated, stripped of his rank, and sentenced to solitary confinement on Devil’s Island for passing military secrets to Imperial Germany.
Watching from the front row is Major Georges Picquart: an ambitious, cultured officer who is promptly rewarded with command of the Statistical Section, France’s covert military intelligence unit. Inheriting a ramshackle office staffed by cynical archivists, intercept operators, and handwriting analysts, Picquart soon intercepts a torn pneumatic letter addressed to a different French officer, Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. As Picquart realizes with mounting horror that the evidence against Dreyfus was fabricated by his own intelligence service, he attempts to right the injustice, only to find the entire military establishment turning its surveillance machinery, forged dossiers, and assassination threats against him. In audio, Harris’s present-tense narration creates an overwhelming sense of immediate danger and moral claustrophobia.
For listeners seeking an intellectually riveting, historically authentic Espionage epic that provides sensational credit value, *An Officer and a Spy* is an indispensable masterpiece. Acclaimed actor David Rintoul delivers an authoritative, magnetic performance that captures Picquart’s quiet integrity and mounting desperation with thrilling clarity. Paired with companion classics like The Day of the Jackal and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, this sixteen-hour tour de force is an extraordinary exploration of whistleblowing, institutional corruption, and the relentless courage required to defy an empire of lies, offering magnificent return on a single credit.
David Rintoul delivers an authoritative, magnetic performance that drives Robert Harris’s present-tense procedural prose with compelling urgency. Rintoul gives Major Georges Picquart a cultured, aristocratic composure that makes his growing moral outrage over forged military dossiers intensely powerful to witness. His French pronunciation is crisp and natural, effortlessly distinguishing between arrogant high-command generals, cynical courtroom judges, and beleaguered intelligence clerks across sixteen suspenseful hours of high-stakes historical investigation. Rintoul's controlled vocal pacing ensures that the intricate web of counter-intelligence and forged documents remains electrifying and crystal-clear throughout.