Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Great Novels about the CIA

In comments to the previous post, Bram points us to Robert Littell's great, sprawling saga about the CIA, The Company. I agree with Bram that it's a wonderful book and well worth reading if you like books about espionage and the Cold War. A little Googling reveals that Ridley Scott has signed on to direct a six-part miniseries of the book for TNT, to begin shooting in Toronto in August and to be shown on TV next summer. Can't wait.

If you like fiction about the CIA, the apex of the genre in my opinion is Charles McCarry's series of books about CIA agent Paul Christopher. The series runs as follows: The Miernik Dossier (1971), Tears of Autumn (1974), The Secret Lovers (1977), The Last Supper (1983), Second Sight (1992), and Old Boys (2005).

The Miernik Dossier is the least interesting of the bunch and Christopher doesn't really come into focus until the end of the book. You might skip it and start with Tears of Autumn, an astonishingly good book featuring (among other things) a surprisingly convincing alternative history of the Kennedy Assasination. (Alan Furst excerpted it in his recent anthology of great espionage fiction, The Book of Spies.*) The others are also terrific. McCarry fans had been under the impression, I gather, that Second Sight was the last of the series. (The cover of my paperback copy says, "The Last Paul Christopher Thriller.") However, without much advance warning, a new one, Old Boys, appeared in 2005. It's difficult to single out any of them as clearly superior to the others. If you have the time and energy for it, I'd start with Tears of Autumn and read through the rest.

The McCarry books were difficult to track down for a while, but the kind and generous people at Overlook Press are now putting them back into print. Thus far, they've put out The Miernik Dossier, The Tears of Autumn, The Last Supper, and Old Boys. The Secret Lovers is available in November. More please.

*Speaking of Furst, his new book, The Foreign Correspondent, is just out. Don't argue with me. Go buy it now. You can thank me later.

Posted by jwb at 8:28 AM   

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