With my Little Eye

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We’ve all seen movies or read books in which someone in the family is a secret spy, usually for the CIA, MI5/6 or the KGB. Often, this individual keeps their job secret from their loved ones and go it alone.

Not so in this real-life story about the Australian Doherty family which, in the mid-20th Century were all in the spying game for ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation), the three young kids, Sue-Ellen, Mark and Amanda, included. Only to them, it was a kind of game they played whenever they were out with their parents, sworn to everlasting secrecy while checking number-plates, houses and closely observing people, making friends with Chinese or other unusual emigrant groups and fringe communities, or visiting the headquarters of ASIO in a building that had a secret floor.

The family even went on holiday during the 1956 Melbourne Olympics with the notorious Petrovs, two Russians who had defected. (Read about them here.) 

I have no idea why the publicity blurb on the cover of this book describes it as “hilarious”. There is nothing funny about it. Dudley Doherty was a typical 1950s father, authoritarian and not above giving the kids a beating. He visited prostitutes and was an associate of that notorious gangster figure, Abe Saffron, which draws all sorts of questions that are not really resolved here.  After Dudley’s death, the family never spoke again about their involvement until the lifting of some of ASIO history in recent times.

There is intriguing material in this, but somehow the book just doesn’t cut it with a great deal of repetition about how the children didn’t really know what their parents were up to when they took part in the games. Instead of reading the book, just look up the two YouTube links below on the subject. You will get enough of the story from them.

Two and-a-half stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWQ9MqoWuHY
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0VLYNx8ZPc
 

Amazon.com

Dymocks Australia (e-book)

Bookdepository

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