Spymaster Charles McCarry Profiled in The Weekly Standard

David Skinner reflects on the career of Charles McCarry in the new issue of The Weekly Standard. Here's a brief excerpt: "Charles McCarry, the spy novelist, has a number of bestsellers to brag about, if not the numbers or recognition of John le Carré. Still, many discriminating readers think he is better than le Carré. He is also the author of three grisly though impressive political novels, all of which trade liberally in satire and suspense. Praised for their prescience (two of them seem almost prophetic of shocking real-world events) they, too, can seem to be second-place finishers, with little of the cachet reserved for a Christopher Buckley or the audience enjoyed by, say, David Baldacci. McCarry seems to have what's required for literary stardom: winning characters, beguiling plots, fine prose, illuminating research. And the problem cannot be a matter of credentials. A former CIA operative who has worked in many locales, McCarry also has experience in Washington, where he's circulated in high-level politics and the upper reaches of magazine journalism. Sony pictures has an option on Shelley's Heart, and a forgotten Sean Connery movie was made of Better Angels, but Hollywood hasn't made enough of his work. Old Boys, a 2004 novel which revived McCarry's career, seems like an obvious candidate for a Clint Eastwood or Jack Nicholson production. In it, a likable bunch of old men, all retired CIA, take off for one last border-crossing, gun-toting, law-breaking adventure to find their missing friend, Paul Christopher, the sad-hearted hero of McCarry's spy thrillers. It is McCarry's most fun book, and its commercial and critical success led to a frantic market for copies of his other novels, all of which had been out of print. But Overlook Press began reissuing them, and the Washington-set Shelley's Heart was re-released this year.

After buying a copy of Old Boys off the remainder table at Book Revue, a nice store in Huntington, Long Island, I started reading my way through McCarry's novels. Not regularly a reader of thrillers or spy novels, I was surprised at how they lit a fire in me. Sensing an essay in my future, I arranged to interview the author. "The Harbor," the McCarry home in the Berkshires, is like the Berlin apartment of his characters Lori and Hubbard Christopher: "They lived ashore as they lived on their boat, everything ship-shape, with nothing more than they needed." And his cooking was reminiscent of food preparation in his books: simple, light, Mediterranean. For our lunch he made the best crab cakes I've had outside of Oceanaire. McCarry is tall and bald, with a hairless face and owl-like eyes that betray little but a constant flicker of mental processing.

For those who crave vérité, McCarry's years in government, on the campaign trail, and his share of face-time with impressive politicos should lend his Washington fiction every bit as much authenticity as his CIA days lend his Paul Christopher novels. The Washington novels have also delivered important news. Better Angels introduced, long before 9/11, the suicide bomber who uses his own body as a delivery device and boards commercial planes, seeking to blow them up mid-air. Shelley's Heart, published three years before the impeachment of Bill Clinton, showed America's two major parties dueling in Congress for control of the White House, as a recently appointed Supreme Court justice (who bears a strong resemblance to Ralph Nader) looks to manipulate the chaotic hearings to effect a transition from the traditional separation of powers to a rule of one--himself.

At their best, McCarry's Washington novels are about as entertaining as any by Christopher Buckley, though more intellectual. He is superb at showing how social and institutional life in Washington work, and the account is not flattering. His touch for comedy, though at times excellent, is not light. The ideas that distinguish McCarry--some of which are truly probing, a few of which are crankish--also keep him from being to everyone's taste. He tells the story of a liberal reader who complained to him that when his books describe liberals, "they actually describe our enemies." In response, McCarry said, "Precisely." Readers who take to McCarry do so with a vengeance. Christopher Buckley himself and P. J. O'Rourke both insist this fellow scholar of Washington absurdity is more than a good scribbler, in fact an important one. And connoisseurs like Otto Penzler and fellow spy novelists like Richard Condon have called McCarry's spy novels the best by an American writer.

In the late 1970s McCarry heard about another great fan. While writing a travelogue on the southwestern United States for National Geographic Books, he paid a visit to Lady Bird Johnson in Texas who, as she showed off the wildflowers on the grounds of the LBJ Ranch, turned and asked, "Are you the Mr. McCarry who wrote Tears of Autumn?" McCarry allowed that he was.
The former first lady smiled and said, "Lyndon loved that book."

Alan Furst Calls THE MIERNIK DOSSIER as a "Spy Tale Unsurpassed"

Charles McCarry's The Miernik Dossier is chosen by novelist Alan Furst as one of the Five Best spy tales ever written in The Wall Street Journal: "With The Miernik Dossier, Charles McCarry introduced us to Paul Christopher, the brilliant and sensitive CIA officer who would appear in a series of perhaps more widely known novels, such as The Secret Lovers and Second Sight. The book itself is the “dossier” in question: the reports and memoranda filed by a quintet of mutually mistrustful espionage agents, including a seductive Hungarian princess and a seemingly hapless Polish scientist, who undertake to drive from Switzerland to the Sudan in a Cadillac. It is a travelogue that bristles with suspicion and deception—but don’t listen to me, listen to a certain highly acclaimed spy novelist who reviewed McCarry’s literary debut: “The level of reality it achieves is high indeed; it is superbly constructed, wholly convincing, and displays insights that are distinctly refreshing. A new and very welcome talent.” Good call, Eric Ambler."

Charles McCarry's SHELLEY'S HEART in Kirkus Reviews

Kirkus Reviews takes a look at Charles McCarry's Shelley's Heart, coming next month in a new hardcover edition: "There's skullduggery afoot, and plenty of political intrigue, in this latest by accomplished mysterian McCarry (Christopher's Ghosts, 2007, etc.), whose overarching message might be that one has no friends in Washington, those who call you friend are likely to do you harm, and when Republicans call you friend—well, schedule an appointment with the undertaker. McCarry's setup is out of the headlines: A conservative presidential candidate wins office via electoral fraud. This time, however, his opponent has evidence. Enter the FIS—the heir to the CIA, replacing it "after it collapsed under the weight of the failures and scandals resulting from its misuse by twentieth-century Presidents." Enter spooks, defense contractors, lobbyists and assorted other denizens of the District of Columbia—and, to boot, a few deranged assassins and Yale graduates up to no good. The plot thickens and thickens—it has to, after all, since, among other things, part of it turns on a presumptive president's debating "the advantages and disadvantages of appointing a man he believed to be an enemy of democracy as Chief Justice of the United States." There's more than one clef in this roman, which has all the requisites of a Frederick Forsyth–style thriller but adds a few modern twists, some the product of a supersecret Moroccan-born agent whose stiletto heels are the real deal. She's not the only hotty, and there's the requisite steamy sex, too, told in requisite steamy language: "His great ursine weight fell upon her with a brutality that made her gasp with pleasure." Other gasps await good guys and bad guys alike, especially when drilled by tiny bullets to the thorax and other unpleasant means of dispatch.Will democracy survive? Readers will be left guessing until the last minute. A pleasing 21st-century rejoinder to the 1962 novel Seven Days in May, and a capable whodunit."

Charles McCarry on the CIA in The Wall Street Journal

Legendary espionage novelist Charles McCarry offers his view on today's CIA in the Saturday op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal. McCarry, author of eleven novels and eight nonfiction books, served for a decade overseas as a CIA agent. This April, Overlook will release a hardcover edition of Shelley's Heart, a masterful political thriller set in Washington DC.

An Agent of Disclosure: CHARLES McCARRY Profiled in Australia's The Age

Legendary spy novelist Charles McCarry is profiled in The Age, a newspaper in Melbourne, Australia. In a wide-ranging interview McCarry talks to reporter Kevin Rabaleis about his tenure in the CIA and his second career as one of this generation's most-admired novelists.

"I don't think of the books as spy novels," McCarry says. "When I began to write, in my naivety, I thought that I could write about espionage, which is an interesting world because everything is right out on the surface. In theory, at least, all secrets are known, at least in the Organisation. I just thought, probably because it is so much like fiction, that it was a natural subject for fiction and for the novel."

Since 1973, McCarry has produced 1½ million words of page-turning thrillers — so-called spy novels from a literary writer of often-prophetic perception. In The Better Angels (1979), for instance, he writes of America in the last decade of the 20th century when terrorists use passenger-filled planes as their weapons. These and McCarry's other novels of Paul Christopher and his family are essential volumes in the pantheon of contemporary American fiction, where for equivalents — as far as books with recurring characters go — one must look to John Updike's "Rabbit" Angstrom series or Philip Roth's Nathan Zuckerman books.

"I taught myself to read at the age of four," McCarry says. "I've been a voracious reader all of my life. In that sense, my books have many authors — that is, authors whom I have read in the course of my lifetime. And there are a lot of them. I'm 78 years old. I think I owe something to them. Literature, to me, is a living creature. I think that you owe it something."

Charles McCarry's THE BETTER ANGELS in the Toronto Star

Charles McCarry's 1979 thriller, The Better Angels, is reviewed in the Toronto Star: "In the course of Charles McCarry's recently released thriller, The Better Angels, Arab terrorists lay plans to crash domestic passenger planes into Western targets. Ah, the unwary reader concludes, McCarry is borrowing from the most terrible episode in early 21st century American history. No, no, the more informed reader realizes, McCarry isn't repeating history. In a remarkable feat of prescience, his book actually anticipates future events. McCarry wrote and published The Better Angels in 1979. Now, in a worthy venture, the American publisher Overlook has launched a program of reissuing McCarry's past novels in new hardcover copies. The series begins with The Better Angels, which happens to be a timely choice for more reasons than McCarry's foreshadowing of 9/11. This kind of extravagant stuff sounds like leftovers from a lame Tom Clancy novel, but in McCarry's sophisticated hands, the material becomes engrossing and convincing. McCarry's own background is in diplomacy and espionage. A man now in his 80s, he began his political life in the Eisenhower administration and later worked as a CIA undercover operative for nine years. He says his two writing influences are Somerset Maugham and Richard Condon. His books reflect the civilized treachery of Maugham's spy novels and the subversive imagination of Condon's thrillers. The talent for predicting is exclusively McCarry's own. Apart from getting 9/11 right, he seems to have been one of the earliest thriller writers to work computers into his plot. As an instrument in Horace Hubbard's machinations, his number one assistant gets "computers talking to one another." It's true that only a minute group of people in the entire world are aware of computers in The Better Angels, but it seems remarkable that, as early as 1979, McCarry even considered a computer as an essential plot device. It seems certain that McCarry's imagination, freewheeling and abundant as it was in 1979, would never have conceived of a Sarah Palin appearing as any party's vice-presidential candidate." - Jack Batten

New in Paperback: CHRISTOPHER'S GHOSTS by Charles McCarry

Charles McCarry's electrifying Christopher's Ghosts is now available in a handsome trade paperback edition from Overlook. In McCarry's first work since the astonishing revival of his legendary espionage novels, Paul Christopher is back–but so is the only adversary that ever eluded him. The grand tale begins in Europe in the late thirties, where a young Christopher and his family are struggling against the rise of Nazi totalitarianism in Berlin, even as he wrestles with a doomed love affair and bears witness to an unspeakable atrocity committed by a remorseless S.S. officer. The action spans oceans and time to the height of the Cold War in Europe, when the S.S. man emerges out of the ruins of postwar Germany to destroy the last living witness to his crime. It’s a case of tiger chasing tiger as Christopher is pursued by the only man alive who can match his tradecraft or his instincts. As he edges toward the final confrontation with this mortal enemy, Christopher is forced to operate in the one theater he had thought he had mastered—his own past.

More Praise for CHARLES McCARRY

With the paperback releases of The Tears of Autumn and The Miernik Dossier, and the hardcover reissue of Second Sight, the great Charles McCarry is back in the spotlight.

The December issue of Men's Journal magazine features a list of the Top Literary Thrillers ever written and coming in at #5 is The Tears of Autumn, McCarry's international bestseller now available in a new trade paperback edition. This classic Paul Christopher novel, originally published in 1974, explores the JFK assasination. In the current issue of The Kenyon Review, Andre Bernard writes of his own recent discovery of The Tears of Autumn: "McCarry's style is just terrific. He's wonderfully fluid, writing elegantly yet succintly about the underbelly of government. His characters are fully formed, his landscapes and cities are real breathing things. He fills his tale with casual yet vital tidbits about the trade of spies, and whether they are true to life or imagined the resulting picture is stunningly vivid. He has a flair for summing up history and conjuring a vision of an out-of-control American military establishment. . . If you haven't discovered McCarry, now is the time to head to your local bookstore."

McCarry's latest novel, Christopher's Ghosts, was published in May, and continues to earn rave reviews from all over the world. In the November Commentary, Brian M. Carney offers a thoughtful review of McCarry's compelling tale of a young Paul Christopher in pre-war Berlin, and concludes: "You need not have read a Paul Christopher novel to appreciate Christopher's Ghosts. (In my opinion, the masterpiece among McCarry's works is The Last Supper). But if this is your first, it is unlikely to be your last." And from down under, The Sydney Morning Herald declares "McCarry has written an elegant historical novel elaborating the formative moments in the life of his recurring character, CIA operative Paul Christopher. Christopher's Ghosts is a kind or prequel for those lucky enough to have discovered McCarry earlier. And if you haven't, it may be a good place to start before backtracking through the catalogue of an author whom P.J. O'Rourke describes as the best modern writer on the subject of intrigue."

Classic McCarry: SECOND SIGHT Now Available in New Hardcover Edition

Charles McCarry's acclaimed novel Second Sight is finally available in a new hardcover edition from Overlook. This is the seventh in the series of Paul Christopher novels, a thrilling story that combines masterful flashbacks and memorable characters. Writing in USA Today, novelist Ross Thomas noted that "it may well be the best of the fictional spy dynasty, that remarkable Christopher clan . . . It is without a doubt, a special treat for those of us who dote on novels of espionage as it is practiced by our betters. To paraphrase another gifted novelist, McCarry has successfully taken spying out of the dark alleys of the world and dumped it back into Georgetown where it belongs."

Charles McCarry at Politics & Prose this Friday night

Today's DCist mentions beloved Overlook Press author Charles McCarry's exclusive engagement Friday night at the great Politics & Prose, bringing together a singularly magnificent bookstore and a legendary writer of the highest order. Yes, Fridays are for getting away early, but this Friday it's worth sticking around in the DC metro area a little bit later.

Christopher's Ghosts, Mr. McCarry's latest, has not merely confirmed his place among our literature's most superior writers of any ilk, but also boldly reinvented the spy thriller. See above the intrepid and knowledgeable staff of the aforementioned indy book giant. Only a store of their caliber could host an author such as Mr. McCarry. Please attend for a reading and booksigning you will always remember:

Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse
Directions and Accessibility

5015 Connecticut Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20008

1-800-722-0790
202-364-1919
202-966-7532 (Fax)

STORE HOURS:
Mon -Thur 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m.
Fri & Sat 9:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m.
Sunday 10:00 a.m. - 8 p.m.

If you're unable to attend the signing, call or e-mail and try to get a signed copy for yourself and your loved ones. Father's Day is Sunday. And helpful booksellers are standing by.

Listen for Charles McCarry

Charles McCarry is coming to a radio near you talking about his new novel Christopher's Ghosts and his classic thriller of the Kennedy assassination The Tears of Autumn, which releases in paperback Tuesday 6/5.

Listen up!

6/5 8 AM WOCM-FM Ocean City, MD--"Rude Awakening with Mad Dog"
6/5 8:40 AM KUKA-FM Corpus Christie, TX--"The Morning Show with Pete Vasquez"
6/6 7:35 AM USA NETWORK "Daybreak USA" with Al Lerner
6/6 5:15 PM WDWS-AM Champaign, IL "Gary O'Brien and Friends"
6/8 9:30 AM KCMN-AM Colorado Springs, CO "Tron in the Morning"

Charles McCarry's CHRISTOPHER'S GHOSTS in The NEW YORK SUN

The great Otto Penzler takes notice of the latest Paul Christopher novel in today's NEW YORK SUN:

There is something disconcerting, even embarrassing, about having so much affection for an author that writing about him becomes too great a challenge. Words of praise become inadequate, almost juvenile, in their failed attempts to adequately describe the brilliance of a given work, somewhat like trying to explain the love one feels in a perfect marriage, or at the birth of a first child. This fear of losing all critical faculties strikes like an arrow in the heart whenever I'm confronted with a new work by America's greatest espionage writer, Charles McCarry. It is no good thing to be seen as obsequious or awed when writing about a book, but there is no credit in finding flaws in an object of rare beauty, either. While it is indeed possible that there is no such thing as a perfect creation by the mind and hands of man, a scarce few works of art come closer than others, and Mr. McCarry has approached that ideal on a number of occasions, bringing joy and understanding to those fortunate enough to have encountered his novels.

Christopher's Ghosts in The Washington Post and The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Further good notice of the new Paul Christopher novel by Charles McCarry comes from the WASHINGTON POST today and THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER yesterday:

"Fans of the superior espionage author Charles McCarry know of his long series featuring agent and gentleman Paul Christopher. Now, in Christopher's Ghosts (Overlook Press, $25, 304 pp.), we flash back to a teenage Christopher falling in love, with dangerous consequences, both immediately and later."--Michele Ross

"McCarry is back in form here, and by pitting the Christopher family against the Nazis, he is deadly serious. The story is rich in suspense, colorful characters, sudden surprises and detail. His prose, as always, is elegance itself."--Patrick Anderson

Charles McCarry & CHRISTOPHER'S GHOSTS praised effusively in THE WASHINGTON TIMES, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES and THE SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

Terrific reviews continue to pour in on Charles McCarry's new literary thriller Christopher's Ghosts. Check it out:

"Many critics believe that Charles McCarry is the finest espionage writer working today. Count me in. He writes with precise attention to detail yet manages to encompass the big picture of the bloodiest century in history, avoiding unnecessary drama and excessive heroics. This is the way it really was, the reader thinks upon digesting a McCarry book, which is the finest compliment that can be paid any novelist."--Steve Bennett, San Antonio Express-News

"Our greatest spy novels aren't concerned just with gadgets, lingo and tradecraft, they're also alive with compelling characters and moral dilemmas that resonate long afterward in a reader's mind. McCarry has been developing his main character for decades, and readers are richer for it. He isn't writing spy novels as much as elegant installments in the life of his most fascinating creation — that "Old Boy" and second-generation spy Paul Christopher, whose adventures have ranged from pre-World War II Berlin through the Cold War to the current war on terror."--Denise Hamilton, Los Angeles Times

"Christopher's Ghosts is the latest in a series of often elegant novels that former CIA officer Charles McCarry has written about his fictional spy Paul Christopher, American intelligence and the Christopher clan. This novel should find itself in many a briefcase and flight bag this summer."--Steve Hirsch, The Washington Times

Charles McCarry's CHRISTOPHER'S GHOSTS a Denver Post Editor's Choice.

Good word from the DENVER POST on Charles McCarry's latest!

CHRISTOPHER'S GHOSTS by Charles McCarry

This week marks the triumphant return of the famed Paul Christopher in his first (and possibly last) adventure. Christopher's Ghosts serves as both a prequel and a coda to Christopher's legendary and troubled career and extends the reach of the Christopher family through all the major events of the late Twentieth Century. Order your copy today. Charles McCarry will be reading and signing at Politics and Prose in Washington DC June 15th.

"Effectively a prequel to McCarry's series of outstanding novels featuring master spy Paul Christopher this exciting tale presents the prolog and denouement-two periods separated by 20 haunted years-of one of CIA agent Christopher's most dramatic career problems....The book has much to recommend it: the prose is elegantly literate, the plot unfolds clearly, the characters are drawn in satisfying detail, the transitions are graceful, the sense of place and time is strong, and the "tradecraft" is as authentic as circumstances permit."--Library Journal

"Veteran McCarry remains a compelling storyteller, as shown in his latest spy thriller, which chronicles the early career of his series hero, Paul Christopher....The book speeds toward a satisfying, inevitable conclusion."--Publishers Weekly

"McCarry takes the story of his recurring master spy Paul Christopher back to its wildly romantic beginning....[He] remains at the top of his game."--Kirkus Reviews

Overlook TV: Charles McCarry on CHRISTOPHER'S GHOST

Charles McCarry recorded this video over the weekend for a Spanish publisher who had purchased a number of his legendary Christopher Family novels, including his forthcoming Christopher's Ghosts, which is due out in May 2007. We thought fans would delight to see the master in his writing den speaking about the scope of his fiction and how he views his novels as one large narrative. Enjoy!