5 - Counterfactual Criminology

Summary

Introduction

Roman Polanski's The Ghost (2010) is a faithful adaptation of Robert Harris’ (2007) novel of the same title. Harris’ novel follows the formula established in two of his previous works, in which he combines the novelty of an alternative history with the suspense of a secret concealed at the core of that history. Fatherland (Harris 1992) is set in 1964, in a fictional reality where the Axis powers won the Second World War and Hitler, Heydrich, and Goebbels have managed to keep the majority of the population of the Greater German Reich ignorant of the multiple genocides the regime has perpetrated. In the final chapter, police detective Xavier March, who is being pursued by the Gestapo, discovers the ruins of Auschwitz concentration camp and realises that the conspiracy theories are true. The alternative history in Archangel (Harris 1998) is that Joseph Stalin had a son, who was brought up in the remote northern wilderness and whose psychopathic character traits were aggravated and honed for four decades. The secret stumbled upon by unscrupulous academic Fluke Kelso is that a reactionary Russian political faction is intending to place the son in the Kremlin, ushering in a new Stalinist regime at the end of the twentieth century. Polanski's The Ghost begins with the protagonist (an anonymous ghost writer, played by Ewan McGregor) being interviewed for the job of completing former UK Prime Minister Adam Lang's (played by Pierce Brosnan) memoirs, following the death of Mike McAra, his friend and aide. McAra was not a professional author and the ghost is required to rewrite the manuscript, in the course of which he investigates both the circumstances of Lang's life and the circumstances of McAra's death.

The ghost begins to suspect that Lang was recruited by the CIA while a student at the University of Cambridge. When he confronts Lang with the evidence he has uncovered, Lang denies the accusation emphatically. Shortly after, Lang is murdered by a former Army officer whose son was killed in Iraq, the memoirs are published, and the narrative appears set to conclude without a clear resolution, Lang a likely but unconfirmed CIA agent.