'Diplomatic Tour Of Revenge' by Robin Marshall

That was how Anne Marshall Zwack, wife of Peter Zwack, doyen of the company that makes Unicum, introduced her own work.“It is really a woman’s book,” she had told me earlier in the year. And having read a galley proof (an early printed version of the book, but not the final, authorized version, and therfore not one from which I am allowed to quote), I can confirm that The Diplomatic Corpse is, indeed, a fun read, fast paced, and with several very nice turns of phrase.

And it also really is more of a woman’s book, for it follows middle-aged Maggie on a journey of self-discovery as she takes revenge on her late husband’s mistresses.

When Jeremy, the British Ambassador to Austria, dies of a heart attack, her world seems to collapse. But then she discovers he died in the arms of his blonde Viennese lover, Mausie. 

And his diaries reveal he had affairs in each of his diplomatic postings. 

With Jeremy’s sombre, moustachioed Hungarian chauffer, Zoltán, in tow, Maggie embarks on a European tour, determined to take revenge on her husband’s paramours.

Marshall’s husband, famously, was an ambassador, albeit briefly (picked as Hungary’s first post-Communist ambassador to the US in 1991, he was sacked less than a year later for being too outspoken about his government boss). 

Like Jeremy (a tall, silver-haired patrician), Zwack is an obsessive diary keeper.

And, as was revealed in his divorce case from first wife Iris, he wrote everything down, with the more intimate details recorded in Hungarian. But there the similarities end.

“I have been asked if the book is autobiographical,” Marshall said at a book launch and signing event at the Alexandra könyvesház on Thursday (June 26) evening. 

(It was attended by her husband, and their son Sándor and daughter Izabella, who had brought along a selection of wines from her Izabella Zwack Wine Selection business.)

“My husband inspired me, but only up to a point.” The rest, she said, was a flight of imagination. 

“I think every woman, at some time, has fantasized about what she would like do to someone she thinks is trying to ‘interfere’ with her love life.”

Choice revenge

Choice types of revenge here include cramming an erstwhile love-rival’s apartment with fish while she is on holiday, including, memorably, draping octopuses from the chandeliers. 

Another ex-lover, who runs a beauty shop, has her creams, well, interfered with, to borrow from Marshall’s own language.
Despite the frivolous fun, Marshall captures the alternating anger and despair of widowed and betrayed Maggie well, and there is a poignant twist to the ending.

The book has been available in the UK in hardback, but has now made it to paperback and is on sale in Hungary.
It is also being translated, and a Hungarian language version is due out in November, to be published by Abovo, which also published Marshall’s first book back in 2001, If you wear galoshes, you’re an émigré, a memoir of Peter Zwack’s life.

The Diplomatic Corpse
Anne Marshall Zwack
Ft2,790
Published by John Murray
ISBN 978-0-7195-30-5"
 
Source: Budapest Sun