Don't Forget the Second Bananas
The Importance of Secondary Characters
Secondary characters abound in fiction. Frankly, if you’ve ever read a story with only a protagonist and an antagonist, it would be pretty boring. TV shows, movies, novels, etc., all have a supporting casts, some of whom have become memorable.
For example, in the short-lived TV show The Green Lantern, Britt Reid, played by Van Williams, was the title character, but it was his sidekick Kato, played by Bruce Lee, whom the audience loved. This show launched Bruce Lee’s equally short-lived career.
Then, there was Ilya Kuryakin, definitely intended to be second banana to Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Indeed, in the first few episodes Ilya barely had any lines at all, but the way the late David McCallum played him with gravitas and an air of mystery quickly made this secondary character a fan favorite who eventually got equal billing, and more lines, with Robert Vaughn.
And who doesn’t remember Radar O’Reilly and Corporal Klinger from M.A.S.H.? They were both secondary characters who rose to near main character status in a highly talented ensemble cast. The writing for those characters and the extraordinary portrayals by the actors who played them (Gary Burghoff and Jamie Farr, respectively) made them essential to the series.
Secondary characters provide comic relief, pathos, and a method for deepening or enlivening the story. It’s the same in novels and short stories. Short stories only give you the briefest glimpse of secondary characters; there’s little time past the main characters and the plot to provide their back story or make them more than a prop.
Think of anything by Jane Austen. She gives us whole casts of secondary characters who are charming and exasperating and tell the story through other eyes–Caroline Bingley, Jane Fairfax, Lucy Steele, and my favorite bumbling clergyman, Mr. William Collins. And the Harry Potter books–scads and scads of fascinating secondary characters, beginning with the Dursleys, Hagrid, Dobby, any of the Weasleys besides Ron, Neville Longbottom, and the one I love to hate, Dolores Umbridge.
Most of the time, we take secondary characters for granted. They’re in the story for a purpose, they serve that purpose, and we move on. Of course, those secondary characters are also rich fodder for fan fiction writers.
So, Why Am I Talking About Secondary Characters?
Because I’ve written 30 works featuring my two main characters and their varied antagonists, I’ve necessarily had to include a host of secondary characters, too many to list here. I have brought one or two back after they’re dead, namely Edwin Terrell Jr., who appears as a concussion-induced “ghost” in the series, Meeting the Enemy. He even has a whole novella, My Noble Enemy, devoted to him. He’s practically a main character in the reader magnet Prologue to Rendition, which takes place in 1977, and he’ll appear late in 2024 in a novel that takes place in 1979, The Devil Passed By.
But I’m going on and on about secondary characters because over three successive NaNoWriMos I wrote full-length novels featuring three specific secondary characters–at the request of readers who wanted to know more about them.
I was content for these characters to be in the background and to come forth when only a plot point needed to be advanced. I’d drop hints of their back stories, but I never really intended to delve deeply into their lives. Granted, I didn’t have to write about them because readers asked me to, but, hey, I love my readers and want to keep them happy.
I’m readying those three novels for my beta readers and editor and hope to issue them as an eBook box set first in June 2024 then as three separate novels in print shortly thereafter. The box set will be titled Secrets because, as it turns out since I write about spies, each of these three characters kept secrets close to their vests. Imagine that.
So, who are these secondary characters and what are their secrets?
Katherine Maitland
Who, you ask? True, Katherine Maitland has never actually appeared in anything of mine that’s been published, except for one short story in The Better Spy, “Damaged Goods.” Indeed, in that story she’s a vague mention and never really appears, but that story set up what will be book 1 of the Secrets box set, A Spy’s Legacy.
The title is an homage to John le Carre’s A Legacy of Spies, which was somewhat of a sequel, decades later, to The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. In A Legacy of Spies, the adult son of the British agent featured in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Alex Leamas, sues the British government for his father’s “wrongful death.” A Legacy of Spies goes back and forth between the background events of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and the time of the sequel. In that way, it’s both prequel and sequel to The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. A great read, and le Carre gets his digs in on the politicians who led to Brexit.
Katherine Maitland and her husband Frederick Fisher were spies killed when their daughter was only five years old. Their daughter is, of course, Maitland “Mai” Fisher, who is a spy for the U.N. and about whom I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words.
Mai knows very little about her mother. Indeed, as Mai grows older, she can barely bring her parents’ faces to mind. However, in 2002, after Roisin O’Saidh’s (another secondary character) untimely death on 9/11 (Meeting the Enemy: TERROR), Mai discovers a cache of personal diaries by Roisin’s predecessors, her mother Eithne (Enya) O’Saidh and her sister Aifric O’Saidh. It appears that Roisin left them for Mai to find on purpose, perhaps to show her who her mother really was.
Alexei Bukharin, Mai’s partner and husband, at first supports Mai’s desire to read all the diaries, but as she gets closer to the time of Katherine’s death, he worries she will discover a secret only two people know, one she can never learn. He knows how important Mai’s mother is to her. When tortured by the Taiwanese secret police, Katherine Maitland never broke, and Mai has always used that legacy in her own work. He doesn’t want her to lose what gives her strength.
In A Spy’s Legacy, we “meet” Katherine Maitland when she’s recruited to go work with Alan Turing at Bletchley, and follow her through the 1950s. We actually get to witness Mai’s birth. With the diaries as a guide, Mai follows her mother’s story to what she thinks is its expected end, and Alexei and Nelson do whatever it takes to keep the secret they don’t want Mai to learn.
Katherine Maitland, then, is the spy and Mai Fisher is her legacy in A Spy’s Legacy.
In the next post, I’ll highlight the other two remaining characters whose stories will make up the rest of Secrets: Olga Lubova and Grace Lydell, so click on “Subscribe
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