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So Müller is an Englishman pretending to be a German while in England? Ummm...

Actually, at the time of Black Island he is supposed to be the respectable director of a mental institution, so it makes sense that he was operating under his real name.
It also makes sense that, after leaving prison and being hired as an agent for a foreign power, he adopts a new identity.

I've not said he was an Englishman - I've specifically said that we simply don't know where he is from.

But: your thesis that spies/ agents of foreign powers assume a false identity when in the field abroad actively bars "Müller" from being German (by your logic), otherwise it's not a disguise.

He could be another national, be it Englishman, or Scotsman, or Australian, or Bordurian, or Serbo-Croat..., etc., pretending to be German, if you wanted your proposition about agents in disguise to hold true.
If he is a German, then he's not in disguise, and your proposition is false.


Why? He isn't a respectable person, he's just pretending to be one to cover his criminal activity.
And, flogging the same horse, even if it is his real name, it doesn't make him German, just a man with a German name, which isn't enough to establish nationality...

Have you been reading Le Carré recently? He's the specialist on spies and muddled plots and identities. All this "he may, he may not be" is just the sort of thing he'd come up with :)

Seriously, it is my view that Müller in Black Island is just another crook, even if he was based on Georg Bell who was involved in seedy Nazi government plots. After all, the book does not raise any political issues like in Blue Lotus, Broken Ear or Ottokar's Sceptre. It just gives the feel of a detective chasing crooks for purely criminal activities.

Also, in Red Sea Sharks, Müller becomes "Mull Pasha" - based on John Glubb who became "Glubb Pasha". If Müller was not his real name then he would probably have based his Arabic sobriquet on his actual on or even gone for "Smith Pasha" or something else.

You aren't placing it in context; the fear of Fifth Columnists destabilizing economies and countries was both prevalent and relevant, and easily recognizable by the original readership. Never mind that the whole tale was inspired at least in part by Hitchcock's spy film The 39 Steps (itself based on John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps, in which the spy ring is called The Black Stone...).

If you don't think it raising political points, then I think that in a way you may have missed the point (and chipped away yet another reason for Müller to be German...).


Or continued to use the false identity he was living under when he was working for the Germans? Or he had moved on to being Mr. Mull at some point between the two? People who adopt aliases often do so along a theme, so that they are less likely to make errors, can more easily cover errors if they are made, don't have to change their initials, and to allow them to alter what documents they do have.

Of course, it's perfectly possible to make the assumptions that you are making; what I am still saying is that they have to be assumptions - they aren't specifically supported by the books, nor indeed are they necessary.