Coq Rouge (novel)

Coq Rouge
Swedish first edition cover.
Author(s)	Jan Guillou
Original title	Coq Rouge
Country	Sweden
Language	Swedish
Series	Carl Hamilton #1
Genre(s)	Spy novel
Publication date	1986 (orig.)
Media type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages	440 pp (Eng. paperback trans.)
ISBN	ISBN 3492233708 (Eng. trans.)
Followed by	The Democratic Terrorist

Coq Rouge is a 1986 spy novel by Swedish author Jan Guillou, the first book featuring the fictional spy Carl Hamilton.

Background

Carl Hamilton was created by Jan Guillou after he had been sentenced to prison for espionage - for exposing an illegal spy organization inside the Swedish military (see the IB affair). His aim with the Hamilton books was to write what he knew about the world of intelligence and counter-intelligence, even though he was forbidden to tell.

The codename "Coq Rouge", comes from a chat between Neslund and his Israelii counterpart after a meeting in France between the security services in Europe. Neslund say that Hamilton is as proud as a rooster and a communist. The Israeli then says: "Why don`t the call him the red rooster, "coq rouge?".

A friend of Guillou, Gabriel Oxenstierna, was the inspiration to Hamilton. Oxenstierna was a count and socialist. The reason for the name "Hamilton" is because there are many nobles with the name Hamilton in Sweden and not so many Oxenstierna.^{[citation needed]}

Plot

Carl Gustaf Gilbert Hamilton was born as a Swedish noble, but he rejected his family values and became a member of Clarté and Vietnam activist. He entered compulsory military service with the intent to infiltrate the system, in order to strengthen it. While training to be an attack diver, he is given an offer by "DG" (an acronym for Den Gamle, "The Old"), a retired boss in Swedish intelligence still active in the intelligence world). The state would pay for a double education for him in the United States: he would study computers openly and special operations secretly (training with the Navy SEALs) for five years. He accepted, and so he became Sweden's latest weapon for (counter)intelligence.

After returning from the United States as a lieutenant (Navy reserve) and count, there is no place for him in military intelligence because of political changes in Sweden. He is temporarily assigned to the Swedish Security Police SÄPO, under director Henrik P.Neslund, whom Hamilton hates.

Together with two other SÄPO-policemen, he gets the job of investigating the murder and assassination of a higher SÄPO-officer. The murder has been done very professionally, with few clues and only a loose description of the murderer. Palestinian terrorists are suspected since the victim was working on a case with the Black September, and maybe had information on a coming terror attack. In Oslo the police are following a man with the same description. The investigation is taking Hamilton from Stockholm to Oslo, Beirut, the Red Sea coast of Israel and back to Stockholm for a grand finale at the unofficial Palestinian embassy.

See also

Novels portal

• Coq Rouge
• Lillehammer affair