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Paul Christopher #9
Old Boys
In his magnificent new novel, Charles McCarry returns to the world of his legendary character, Paul Christopher, the crack intelligence agent who is as skilled at choosing a fine wine as he is at tradecraft, at once elegant and dangerous, sophisticated and rough-and-ready. As the novel begins, Paul Christopher, now an aging but remarkably fit 70ish, is dining at home with his cousin Horace, also an ex-agent. Dinner is delicious and uneventful. A day later, Paul has vanished.
The months pass, Paul's ashes are delivered by a Chinese official to the American consulate in Beijing and a memorial service is held in Washington. But Horace is not convinced that Paul is dead and, enlisting the support of six other retired colleagues—a sort of all-star backfield of the old Outfit—Horace gets the "Old Boys" back in the game to find Paul Christopher.
They start with a photo found in Paul's study: a woman's hand holding a centuries' old scroll, once in the possession of the Nazis and now sought by the U.S. government and Muslim extremists alike. Harassed by American intelligence, hunted by terrorists, Horace Christopher and the Old Boys travel the globe, from Xinjiang to Brazil, from Rome to Tel Aviv, Budapest to Moscow, in search of Paul and the unspeakably dangerous truth.
The months pass, Paul's ashes are delivered by a Chinese official to the American consulate in Beijing and a memorial service is held in Washington. But Horace is not convinced that Paul is dead and, enlisting the support of six other retired colleagues—a sort of all-star backfield of the old Outfit—Horace gets the "Old Boys" back in the game to find Paul Christopher.
They start with a photo found in Paul's study: a woman's hand holding a centuries' old scroll, once in the possession of the Nazis and now sought by the U.S. government and Muslim extremists alike. Harassed by American intelligence, hunted by terrorists, Horace Christopher and the Old Boys travel the globe, from Xinjiang to Brazil, from Rome to Tel Aviv, Budapest to Moscow, in search of Paul and the unspeakably dangerous truth.
476 pages, Paperback
First published June 3, 2004
75 people are currently reading
427 people want to read
About the author
Charles McCarry
30 books319 followersMcCarry served in the United States Army, where he was a correspondent for Stars and Stripes, was a small-town newspaperman, and was a speechwriter in the Eisenhower administration. From 1958 to 1967 he worked for the CIA, under deep cover in Europe, Asia, and Africa. However, his cover was not as a writer or journalist.
McCarry was editor-at-large for National Geographic and contributed pieces to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and other national publications.
McCarry was best known for a series of books concerning the life of super spy Paul Christopher. Born in Germany before WWII to a German mother and an American father, Christopher joins the CIA after the war and becomes one of its most effective spies. After launching an unauthorized investigation of the Kennedy assassination, Christopher becomes a pariah to the agency and a hunted man. Eventually, he spends ten years in a Chinese prison before being released and embarking on a solution to the mystery that has haunted him his entire life: the fate of his mother, who disappeared at the beginning of WWII. The books are notable for their historical detail and depiction of spycraft, as well as their careful and extensive examination of Christopher's relationship with his family, friends, wives, and lovers.
McCarry was editor-at-large for National Geographic and contributed pieces to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and other national publications.
McCarry was best known for a series of books concerning the life of super spy Paul Christopher. Born in Germany before WWII to a German mother and an American father, Christopher joins the CIA after the war and becomes one of its most effective spies. After launching an unauthorized investigation of the Kennedy assassination, Christopher becomes a pariah to the agency and a hunted man. Eventually, he spends ten years in a Chinese prison before being released and embarking on a solution to the mystery that has haunted him his entire life: the fate of his mother, who disappeared at the beginning of WWII. The books are notable for their historical detail and depiction of spycraft, as well as their careful and extensive examination of Christopher's relationship with his family, friends, wives, and lovers.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
May 13, 2014
Charles McCarry has been writing his Paul Christopher novels for forty years. I've read several of the novels over the past twenty-eight years - going back to high school. When I started the series I was a teenager and the Soviet Union still existed. Both are now gone, but Charles McCarry is still writing about his Cold War creation. Interestingly a creation that he has allowed to age and continue into the present. No more Cold War, no more Soviets and a world wide situation that is just as messy, but lacking the comfortable division of East vs. West.
In "Old Boys" McCarry goes with a different perspective. That of Horace Hubbard, Paul's cousin. Paul Christopher goes missing, believed to have died in Western China, though all that is returned is his ashes. Not believing that Paul is dead and having learned of a new terrorist threat to the U.S. ,and possibly the spiritual bedrock of western civilization, Horace gets together a group of retired agents (the Old Boys of the title) and they set off on their own private covert operation.
As stories goes this one lacks the melancholy that pervades throughout most of the other Christopher novels. "Old Boys" is more of an action/adventure novel with a little bit of "The Da Vinci Code" thrown in for fun. The protagonists crisscross the globe getting into one sticky situation after another in various "exotic" locales. The entire story takes place in about a month and for a McCarry novel there is a large amount of daring-do thrown into the plot.
It moves along at a quick pace and it isn't very demanding. There is some usual implausible stuff (requiring some of that old "suspension of disbelief") in which a group of long retired operatives are able to make contact with old sources and former double agents (some barely alive, but still alive) and get all types of intelligence that leads them to the Big Bad as well as answers to a mystery that has plagued Paul Christopher for most of his life. I read it in five to ten minute snippets and never felt like I was lost or had to go back several chapters to figure out who everybody was again. Like I said it's not a typical Paul Christopher novel, but then Paul Christopher is basically a supporting character in this one.
A couple reviewers have speculated that this novel was ghost written, but I would have to disagree. There are moments ,throughout the book, that the old Charles McCarry style can be found. This isn't the first time that McCarry has gone with a different narrative perspective (See "The Miernik Dossier") and in this case the story is a first person narrative by Horace. As Horace himself states at the start of the story he isn't Paul Christopher and that difference makes more a very different feel.
As spy novels go "Old Boys" is okay. More typical of American style espionage fiction and less British than some of the earlier entries, but still not a bad entry into the genre. You'll notice that this one I put on my beach read shelf and there it belongs. For me it's a good novel to read in the mornings when we're at a hotel on trip. I typically wake up several hours before the rest of the family and find myself down in the lobby reading and drinking horrible complimentary coffee. I want a novel that won't make me think (too) much and will help while away the hours until everyone has arisen."Old Boys" fits that requirement.
In "Old Boys" McCarry goes with a different perspective. That of Horace Hubbard, Paul's cousin. Paul Christopher goes missing, believed to have died in Western China, though all that is returned is his ashes. Not believing that Paul is dead and having learned of a new terrorist threat to the U.S. ,and possibly the spiritual bedrock of western civilization, Horace gets together a group of retired agents (the Old Boys of the title) and they set off on their own private covert operation.
As stories goes this one lacks the melancholy that pervades throughout most of the other Christopher novels. "Old Boys" is more of an action/adventure novel with a little bit of "The Da Vinci Code" thrown in for fun. The protagonists crisscross the globe getting into one sticky situation after another in various "exotic" locales. The entire story takes place in about a month and for a McCarry novel there is a large amount of daring-do thrown into the plot.
It moves along at a quick pace and it isn't very demanding. There is some usual implausible stuff (requiring some of that old "suspension of disbelief") in which a group of long retired operatives are able to make contact with old sources and former double agents (some barely alive, but still alive) and get all types of intelligence that leads them to the Big Bad as well as answers to a mystery that has plagued Paul Christopher for most of his life. I read it in five to ten minute snippets and never felt like I was lost or had to go back several chapters to figure out who everybody was again. Like I said it's not a typical Paul Christopher novel, but then Paul Christopher is basically a supporting character in this one.
A couple reviewers have speculated that this novel was ghost written, but I would have to disagree. There are moments ,throughout the book, that the old Charles McCarry style can be found. This isn't the first time that McCarry has gone with a different narrative perspective (See "The Miernik Dossier") and in this case the story is a first person narrative by Horace. As Horace himself states at the start of the story he isn't Paul Christopher and that difference makes more a very different feel.
As spy novels go "Old Boys" is okay. More typical of American style espionage fiction and less British than some of the earlier entries, but still not a bad entry into the genre. You'll notice that this one I put on my beach read shelf and there it belongs. For me it's a good novel to read in the mornings when we're at a hotel on trip. I typically wake up several hours before the rest of the family and find myself down in the lobby reading and drinking horrible complimentary coffee. I want a novel that won't make me think (too) much and will help while away the hours until everyone has arisen."Old Boys" fits that requirement.
August 21, 2009
McCarry was always one of my favorites in the age of the Cold War thriller (in books like The Last Supper and The Tears of Autumn). This one is maybe not as good as Le Carre’s one about “old spies” (Absolute Friends) but it’s good and I enjoyed it a lot. Basically it’s the story of 5 old spies, superannuated from the CIA, who join forces to find another one of them who’s disappeared and been reported dead in Western China. They don’t believe it and set out to find him. They’re all 60ish or more—one has to reach for his nitro pills when eluding militant Russians who want to kill him as he comes down the stairs from the apartment of an informer—he later takes a brief respite in the US to get a pacemaker installed before proceeding toKyrgystan and the novel's denouement in the desert.
They’re searching for Paul Christopher (spy-hero of earlier novels, like the rest out to pasture at 70). He’s off because someone brought word that his mother who was kidnapped by the Nazi commander, Heydrich, in WWII when Paul was a teenager, and then never seen again, has surfaced and is in danger. She’s 94. Paul left his friend and cousin, Horace Hubbard, the leader of the old boys, a cryptic letter and a clue to find a hidden safe in his house. There Horace finds a painting (one he’s always hated but worth a million on more) he’s to sell to finance the romp. Eventually Christopher’s daughter Zarah joins the tribe. The enemies are the Chinese secret service (Christopher spend 10 years in a Chinese prison camp in his earlier life), Russian mafia (i.e., ex, KGB), an old Arab millionaire named Ibn Awad who’s stolen some dirty bombs from the Russians which he plans to unleash on American cities. Then there’s Kevin (with his Ohio accent) whose loyalties no one is ever very sure of, though he's mostly likely an American gray (unacknowledged) force or some variation of Russian freelancer.
There’s a subplot that maybe imitates (or covers similar ground as) The Da Vinci Code: the Amphora Scroll, a Roman document hidden in a jar that “proves” that Jesus of Nazareth was an unwitting agent of Roman Intelligence. Lori Christopher (the 94-year old mother) stole it from Heydrich and hid out in the remote reaches of the Taklimakan desert most of her life to keep it away from anyone likely to exploit it. Ibn Awad, he with the dirty bombs, now wants it to discredit Christianity.
The best parts feature the doings of the old boys themselves. Both the Amphora Scroll and the long-lost Lori Christopher plots peter out by the end and the reader doesn’t much care.
They’re searching for Paul Christopher (spy-hero of earlier novels, like the rest out to pasture at 70). He’s off because someone brought word that his mother who was kidnapped by the Nazi commander, Heydrich, in WWII when Paul was a teenager, and then never seen again, has surfaced and is in danger. She’s 94. Paul left his friend and cousin, Horace Hubbard, the leader of the old boys, a cryptic letter and a clue to find a hidden safe in his house. There Horace finds a painting (one he’s always hated but worth a million on more) he’s to sell to finance the romp. Eventually Christopher’s daughter Zarah joins the tribe. The enemies are the Chinese secret service (Christopher spend 10 years in a Chinese prison camp in his earlier life), Russian mafia (i.e., ex, KGB), an old Arab millionaire named Ibn Awad who’s stolen some dirty bombs from the Russians which he plans to unleash on American cities. Then there’s Kevin (with his Ohio accent) whose loyalties no one is ever very sure of, though he's mostly likely an American gray (unacknowledged) force or some variation of Russian freelancer.
There’s a subplot that maybe imitates (or covers similar ground as) The Da Vinci Code: the Amphora Scroll, a Roman document hidden in a jar that “proves” that Jesus of Nazareth was an unwitting agent of Roman Intelligence. Lori Christopher (the 94-year old mother) stole it from Heydrich and hid out in the remote reaches of the Taklimakan desert most of her life to keep it away from anyone likely to exploit it. Ibn Awad, he with the dirty bombs, now wants it to discredit Christianity.
The best parts feature the doings of the old boys themselves. Both the Amphora Scroll and the long-lost Lori Christopher plots peter out by the end and the reader doesn’t much care.
August 12, 2020
This is the first of the Paul Christopher books that I read. I didn’t know it at the time but it is the last in the series (chronologically). Looking back it was actually a good introduction to McCarry’s world and to Paul Chistopher.
Old Boys is a spy novel that takes on the tone of a western or a heist movie, where the old gang is assembled one last time to do a job the aging protagonists may or may not be up for. Also, this came out in the wake of The DaVince Code and the Dan Brownesque subplot and its resolution is in and of itself worth the price of admission.
Old Boys is a spy novel that takes on the tone of a western or a heist movie, where the old gang is assembled one last time to do a job the aging protagonists may or may not be up for. Also, this came out in the wake of The DaVince Code and the Dan Brownesque subplot and its resolution is in and of itself worth the price of admission.
March 17, 2019
This amazing read was exceptional. Espionage at its best. Oddly, this was my first Charles McCarry read. WOWZER! This was written in the classic style (re: Robert Littell). It's a real round-the-world tour with a cast of fascinating characters and plot twist after twist. What a treat!
April 19, 2010
One of life's minor pleasures is reading a book that has been on your shelf for years. I have had Charles McCarry's Old Boys for six or seven years. It's not that I didn't want to read it, but it was the first McCarry I acquired. Having bought it, I realized it was a series book and that I would have to go about purchasing the, then out of print and hard to find, earlier books. I spent some time tracking down used copies and then Overlook Press reprinted his books. So, I've now caught up and could read this one.
Reading these books in order is important. Even more than the Ian Fleming novels, there are important subplots that span the books that will be ruined if you read them out of order. The earlier ones you can probably read out of synch, but you should hold off on Old Boys, until you have read a few of the earlier ones.
McCarry's books are old school spy novels, which makes sense as he was an old school spy. The main characters are not Jack Bauers or even James Bond's, but instead are skilled in subterfuge and ferreting out information by means other than torture. The plots are often elaborate, and this book is no exception. There is so much going on that it might seem a bit much. The plot starts with one retired spy gathering some retired friends to find the missing Paul Christopher, the hero from the first books. Loose nukes, family history, terrorism and the new Russia figure heavily.
What also figures heavily is one of the better subplots from any of his books, and one of the cleverest conspiracy theories I have ever read. In addition to looking for Paul Christopher, the characters are hunting for a text which claims that one of histories great events was actually a covert operation. If you buy the arguments of a certain 18th century British historian, it would make for the biggest case of blowback of all time.
The book is a bit sprawling, but bits like the covert op make it a lot of fun.
Reading these books in order is important. Even more than the Ian Fleming novels, there are important subplots that span the books that will be ruined if you read them out of order. The earlier ones you can probably read out of synch, but you should hold off on Old Boys, until you have read a few of the earlier ones.
McCarry's books are old school spy novels, which makes sense as he was an old school spy. The main characters are not Jack Bauers or even James Bond's, but instead are skilled in subterfuge and ferreting out information by means other than torture. The plots are often elaborate, and this book is no exception. There is so much going on that it might seem a bit much. The plot starts with one retired spy gathering some retired friends to find the missing Paul Christopher, the hero from the first books. Loose nukes, family history, terrorism and the new Russia figure heavily.
What also figures heavily is one of the better subplots from any of his books, and one of the cleverest conspiracy theories I have ever read. In addition to looking for Paul Christopher, the characters are hunting for a text which claims that one of histories great events was actually a covert operation. If you buy the arguments of a certain 18th century British historian, it would make for the biggest case of blowback of all time.
The book is a bit sprawling, but bits like the covert op make it a lot of fun.
December 31, 2023
Just couldn’t get into it. I don’t think spy novels are for me 🤢🤢
February 15, 2018
Great book to read! Keeps you interested in what will happen next!
I was not sure if I would like this series. Charles McCarty is a wonderful writer! If you like to read espionage/spy, I recommend reading this author.
I was not sure if I would like this series. Charles McCarty is a wonderful writer! If you like to read espionage/spy, I recommend reading this author.
October 21, 2017
I really came to love Paul Christopher as the hero of the series of novels delivered overtime by Charles McCarry; some of these novels are real masterpieces, like The Last Supper and Tears of Autumn, able to transcend their genre, others are very solid espionage stories, and a few are a little weaker.
Old Boys is the final instalment of the series and I’m afraid belongs to the latter cluster; after a promising start, the story meanders around various narrative streams which struggle to fit together. Paul Christopher’s presence here is more spiritual than physical as he’s supposedly dead or at east AWOL for almost the entire story. So, the first, and apparently main stream is about the search for Paul Christopher, who turns out was in search - again -of his mother, Lori; so a family saga more than an espionage thriller. In fact, the book seems to be conceived to bring home a number of loose ends from all the previous books related to the personal stories of the Christopher family; this is especially Lori’s book and it serves the purpose of filling a lot of gaps of her life, which had remained very mysterious so far. Then you have another parallel stream, trying to close the loop on a story also from previous books about an Arab prince, supposedly dead but actually alive and kicking, wanting to nuke the world. As if this was not enough, there is then a third narrative stream around t an ancient scroll telling an alternate version of Jesus Christ’s life - and the idea of presenting Jesus Christ as a secret agent for the roman empire and the apostle Paul as his case officer is a looooong shot, bordering the ridiculous letting alone blasphemy. So, you wait for the various streams to connect, except they don’t...
Among all this, you have several excruciatingly long digressions (like the lengthy description of how a rare bird called “houbara bustard” is hunted in the Asian deserts) which further dilute and fragment the storytelling.
So, a lot of diverse narrative staff going on; Old Boys however does not have the power of other books in transcending their genre, so it ends up being a long soup. In essence, not the grandest final act for the series, yet this does not change my overall judgement of the overall saga, which remains very high.
Old Boys is the final instalment of the series and I’m afraid belongs to the latter cluster; after a promising start, the story meanders around various narrative streams which struggle to fit together. Paul Christopher’s presence here is more spiritual than physical as he’s supposedly dead or at east AWOL for almost the entire story. So, the first, and apparently main stream is about the search for Paul Christopher, who turns out was in search - again -of his mother, Lori; so a family saga more than an espionage thriller. In fact, the book seems to be conceived to bring home a number of loose ends from all the previous books related to the personal stories of the Christopher family; this is especially Lori’s book and it serves the purpose of filling a lot of gaps of her life, which had remained very mysterious so far. Then you have another parallel stream, trying to close the loop on a story also from previous books about an Arab prince, supposedly dead but actually alive and kicking, wanting to nuke the world. As if this was not enough, there is then a third narrative stream around t an ancient scroll telling an alternate version of Jesus Christ’s life - and the idea of presenting Jesus Christ as a secret agent for the roman empire and the apostle Paul as his case officer is a looooong shot, bordering the ridiculous letting alone blasphemy. So, you wait for the various streams to connect, except they don’t...
Among all this, you have several excruciatingly long digressions (like the lengthy description of how a rare bird called “houbara bustard” is hunted in the Asian deserts) which further dilute and fragment the storytelling.
So, a lot of diverse narrative staff going on; Old Boys however does not have the power of other books in transcending their genre, so it ends up being a long soup. In essence, not the grandest final act for the series, yet this does not change my overall judgement of the overall saga, which remains very high.
August 11, 2024
This book is a combination of what I like about the series, e.g., interesting characters and good writing (for the genre), with one of the things that I don't like a, i.e., a completely absurd plot that involves a lost scroll that demonstrates that Jesus was an unwitting Roman agent, a terrorist who survives a botched assasination to develop a scheme involving suitcase nukes stored in an abandoned Russian gas storage field, an American spy who stages his own disappearance in a Chinese labor camp to meet up with his mother in Kyrgyzstan who fled there during WW II to escape the Nazis who abducted her, and a clique of retired CIA officers, "the Old Boys," traipsing all over the world figuring out all of the above. Nevertheless, hard not to like a book that includes the following, "Cooking, for me, is what golf seems to be for more clubbable men, something that gets your mind off your everyday work because it requires a certain amount of skill and concentration, yet at the same time is a means to sociable ends." and "...my deeply held belief, based on hours and hours of boredom, that meetings of more than two people are thieves of time in which nothing important is ever accomplished..." I also appreciated the book's detailed descriptions of falconry.
May 15, 2019
A few months ago I read an obituary on Charles McCarry in the LA Times and thought I would read a few of his novels about CIA agents and espionage, etc. I enjoy this genre so I purchased OLD BOYS. The story has a double plot; the dynamic between older retired CIA agents and the current young breed of agents in approaching issues of national security. In addition, an evil man in the Middle East has possession of some potent bombs that could spell doom for humanity. Both sets of agents pursue the bad guys. I had some difficulty in tracking the narrator's travels through Europe and the Middle East as well as some of the technical details of CIA work, but overall the story held my interest. I have purchased several other novels by McCarry.
September 6, 2020
Kind of funny to see McCarry try to goose things up with, of all things, a "DaVinci Code" kind of subplot. He puts enough interesting stuff into it that it's not wholly laughable, but that plausibility that made the earlier Paul Christopher novels so convincing is right out the window here. Of course, Christopher himself was always an at least mildly implausible character. One reason Le Carre always has an edge over McCarry is that he doesn't make his characters supermen, or some kind of Ralph Emerson variant of James Bond. Still in all this is zippy, the globe-trotting environments attractively and deftly sketched, and all that.
March 30, 2022
Bailed on this one, so it should be no stars.Feels like the author is writing for a movie deal with an ensemble cast of big name actors in their senior years, and access to a catalogue of locations needing a fistful of visas and a full team of subtitle scribes. They’ve even conjured up a Dan-brown-esque gimmick of a scroll from biblical times in which it is suggested that Jesus was an agent for the Romans (at least, I think that was the proposition). If you’re looking for an action thriller this will get your stars, if you’re looking for something more weighty in terms of an espionage thriller; give it a miss.
February 5, 2017
2.5 stars. I'd never read this author before and I should have started with an earlier work, because I think I missed a lot of connections. There's a promising setup about a missing spy and the colleagues who come out of retirement to find him, but there's so much plot (Islamic terrorism, ww2 espionage, a scroll from Biblical times, falconry) that we lose track of both the emotional journey and the tradecraft. The ending feels like an '80s action movie. Disappointing, but I'll try another by this author.
November 6, 2022
This was a marvelous espionage tale of old men past their prime, but still having the skills and intelligence of days-gone-by.
Full of action, dialogue, and at times, poetic lines and words. The old boys crisscross around the world tracking down old contacts, and enemies, some of them too old to put up a fight, and would rather just have a drink.
I loved Old Boys, written by a retired spy himself, Charles Mccarry.
This was a satisfying end to the Christopher family saga. Highly recommended for Clancy spy fans.
August 6, 2024
Big time spoiler alert- Fun read but like a lot of 4th or 5th novel or more of an author, what starts as an intriguing story devolves into an “oh come on, really?!?” eye roll. Old guys do a reunion tour? Okay. Old guys go everywhere all over the world all at once and get details no one’s found in 20+ years? Probably not but I’ll roll with it. Old guys go to the middle of nowhere Uzbekistan and pull the bad guy out right between all of his heavily armed guards? Puh-lease. But then using divining power with a coat hanger was the coup de grace. Really? Dowsing?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 22, 2018
Paul Christopher returns in a novel that takes an aging agency and military community we've been introduced to in the past and puts them back into the action for that "one last phone call that says you are needed." I'm reading all of McCarry right now, and I have to say I am in awe at the perfection of his plots and paragraphs. This work doesn't disappointment. I practically read it without putting it down.
January 31, 2020
This isn't the book I read but can't find the "Old Boys" published in 2004. I really like the one I read, it had me hooked from the first. McCarry's character development is outstanding as is the plot development with all its twists and turns.
The story read like reality -- one which I'm grateful is fiction but could happen. The historical background adds to the interest and reality. I'm looking forward to reading more of his works. mikiel
The story read like reality -- one which I'm grateful is fiction but could happen. The historical background adds to the interest and reality. I'm looking forward to reading more of his works. mikiel
January 7, 2021
Fast moving, easy to read, but I quit on it because the protagonists didn’t have to do anything other than fly off to some remote locale and have long lost contacts show up out of the blue and tell them the next clue. Kind of dull when you realize the action is based on characters’ histories rather than their present actions. Not terrible, just not for me.
June 13, 2025
silly fun
Humorous and extraordinarily unlikely tale about old CIA spies carrying out one last adventure to outwit evil terrorists. Along the way, an interpretation of the Biblical story of Jesus reimagined as a Roman spy setup complete with Judas Iscariot as a plant by a Roman spymaster.
Humorous and extraordinarily unlikely tale about old CIA spies carrying out one last adventure to outwit evil terrorists. Along the way, an interpretation of the Biblical story of Jesus reimagined as a Roman spy setup complete with Judas Iscariot as a plant by a Roman spymaster.
July 4, 2017
Excellent thriller, the most recent in a series that I have never read before. Paul Christopher is an old master spy, but what has happened to him? China says he is dead. His cousin Horace doesn't believe it. An old spy himself, he gets some old cohorts together to find Paul.
August 11, 2018
McCarry is my favorite spy novelist. I suppose le Carré is better, whatever that may mean, exactly, but McCarry affords me greater pleasure. I breathe a sigh of comfort when I encounter Paul Christopher and friends, much the same reaction I have to the appearance of Rumpole.
June 17, 2019
It's hard to know when to quit.
This is a stem winder of a story, but it is a great big over-reach in the discussion of the artifact. I guess it is hard to quit when th mystery is so much fun.
This is a stem winder of a story, but it is a great big over-reach in the discussion of the artifact. I guess it is hard to quit when th mystery is so much fun.
February 12, 2024
Overlong, convoluted, and boring
While I am a fan of Charles McCarry, this book was a major disappointment. There are too many overlapping plots, confusing bad guys, long stretches of boring exposition, and a sense that he threw in everything including the kitchen sink to finish it. I kept on reading out of respect for the author and some well-written pages.
While I am a fan of Charles McCarry, this book was a major disappointment. There are too many overlapping plots, confusing bad guys, long stretches of boring exposition, and a sense that he threw in everything including the kitchen sink to finish it. I kept on reading out of respect for the author and some well-written pages.
August 20, 2024
The series of books has been solid top to bottom. This book incorporates a little more surrealism into the story but enjoyable nonetheless. Action is believable and characters well drawn out. Another sturdy book in an oft overlooked series.
July 28, 2018
Love his writing! A little contrived but who cares.
August 12, 2019
Actually 2,5. It's ok, but it's slow going.
January 18, 2021
Way too long (esp the end battles). Totally unbelievable. Yet mostly a good read. Interesting main characters (those crazy Christophers).
February 28, 2021
I was promised John le Carre and I got Michael Bay
December 6, 2022
To my mind McCarry is the best of the spy novelists. This one is a little more James Bondy than the others.
August 26, 2025
It took forever for me to trudge all over the world with these guys. Not particularly exciting or good.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews