I have a fond affection for spy stories. As a child growing up I seemed to inhabit that land so well described in “The perks of being a wallflower”. A land where secrecy seems the safer path and remaining hidden in plain sight, an art form. My whys and wherefores are lost in the dim dark late nineteen forties but I experienced a strange yet familiar itching of the soul when I was reading “With my little eye”. An unexpected connection with the three Doherty children, who are the brave inheritors of the gist of this book.
Sandra Hogan was approached by Sue-Ellen, one of the three children, to write a book. Sandra is a journalist, a reviewer and a teacher of business writing. The story she was asked to write was remarkable.
From 1947 to 1970, Sue-Ellen’s father, Dudley, worked for ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. If that sounds a bit ho-hum after our collective exposure to John Le Carre, the fact that his wife Joan also worked for ASIO comes as a rather unexpected fillip.
Nowadays to look in on ASIO we can simply visit their gov.au website but back then, back when the communist menace was trickling like red paint down over the globe, down towards poor little Australia just recovering from the war, back when politicians regularly preached of “reds under the bed” and the populace were suitably perturbed, back then things were different.
The Dohertys were a father-knows-best family and if Dad was a spy and Mum was a spy then the children were expected to pull their weight as well. And there it is. A Brisbane family actively spying on other Brisbane families thought to be a threat to our fair brown land.
At first Sandra lulled me into a false sense of security and I was enjoying myself. The early chapters even had that faint whiff of Maxwell Smart, secret agent. But as I read on, I began to see just how corrosive and how damaging secrets in a family truly are.
Secrets are exciting to read about and are the absolute heart of spy thrillers but real life is not as slick as fiction. Every secret extracts it’s own little pound of flesh. Every secret adds to the crippling burden we must continue to carry.
There is a biblical quote carved in stone on the facade of the original headquarters of the CIA, Central Intelligence Agency, that, for me, neatly sums up “With my little eye”.
“And You Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Set You Free”.
At the End of the Day 