The Last Supper

Paul Christopher #5

by Charles McCarry

Charles McCarry has been called the best American espionage writer who ever lived. Now, with the re-release of his classic Paul Christopher series, comes The Last Supper, a tour de force that traces the evolution of the OSS and the CIA from the aftermath of World War I through World War II, Vietnam, and the Cold War. To Paul Christopher, the world of espionage had become a region of the mad, in which men and women lived without conviction and were compelled by a craving for conspiracy. But now, he has to find the "mole" in the Outfit and demand justice from enemies, past and present. As he follows the twisting path of this secret American intelligence group, he discovers a trail of betrayal and violence that leads backward to the horrors of the Nazi era and plunges forward beyond the Vietnam War's labyrinth of lies.

Genres: Fiction, Espionage, Thriller, Mystery, Crime, Historical Fiction, Mystery Thriller

Audio CD

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

McCarry 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.

Reviews

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm having a hard time rating this objectively because I have apparently become temporarily jaded about books in general. After finishing this one, I started and rejected EIGHT novels in a row!

Anyway, this is a clever little labyrinthine biography of Paul Christopher. It wasn't the first Christopher novel, but it's a really good one for getting to know all the characters that show up in the other books in the series. You get to find out the history of how all the people ended up in Paul's life, and why they act the way they do.

The book covers about fifty years of time. It starts with how his parents met in 1923, and ends in the mid-1970s. I liked getting to find out all the family history, and then Paul Christopher's wild and rocky career with "the Outfit" (CIA).

Pay attention to the seemingly minor characters and events as they appear. You will need to remember them in the last hundred pages or so of the book when the author unravels the web and all the secrets are revealed.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

4+ The narrator of the audio book did a very nice job imo.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy Charles McCarry’s Paul Christopher series, a great blend of espionage intrigue and commentary on American foreign affairs. Many consider The Last Supper to be his magnum opus. While I enjoyed parts of the book, I will not be one of those people.

The Last Supper is not a conventional Christopher novel in that there’s a case and he’s working it. Instead, it’s kind of a biographical work that traces his father’s life and his own. Throughout it are multiple espionage cases handled by the OSS and CIA respectively that lead up to the book’s big reveal about Christopher, Christopher’s father and the motivations of the people in Christoper’s life. So it’s more of a collection of short stories with a narrative spine.

Some of these work better than others. There are parts of the book that are richly described, like Christopher’s father’s prewar romance in Germany and Christopher’s time in southeast Asia. And there are other parts that are clumsy and unrealized. McCarry is really good at focusing on one case for one novel but not as good at creating the sweeping epic he wants this to be. I get the sense the cases here were story ideas that didn’t have the legs for a 250+ page book, so they found their way here.

The machinations surrounding Christopher are, as I read it, transparently obvious. The revelation of motive near the end didn’t do enough to satisfy me, although the title is appropriate and the inspired scene one of the better parts of the novel.

Also, this didn’t necessarily dock the book a star for me as I know from previous works McCarry’s politics lean conservative but the dude really does not like liberals, especially liberal journalists. McCarry is good at sensory detail and he uses that ability to make sure you know the Big Bad Pinko Writer is somewhat effeminate. Not a good look.

And then, there’s Christopher himself. My love of Ross Macdonald’s Archer series is well known and one of the reasons why I love it (and the Christopher series) is while we’re in Archer’s head the whole time, we’re never really in Archer’s heart. The reader sees him working on a case and understands his motivations but knows little of his back story or what makes him so empathetic. I thought it would be neat to dive into Paul Christopher’s back story but really, less is more with him. McCarry just doesn’t have anything interesting to say to this. Christopher winds up being a carbon copy of his father: handsome, polyglot Gary Sues who do more listening than talking and who people are inexplicably drawn to.

I may be being a little too hard on this book. The espionage stuff is fun and even while having a good idea where it was going, I was hanging on the edge of my seat at the end. Still, I wasn’t as impressed as I should have been for what this book was trying to do.

[Tripp · Rating 5 out of 5]

For many years, the superior spy novels of Charles McCarry were only found in used bookshops. Thanks to republication by Overlook Press, it is now possible to easily get copies of McCarry's Paul Christopher novels. I've just finished the Last Supper, which is probably the best of the four Cold War Christopher novels.

What I find most remarkable about these four novels is that they remain consistently excellent while being dramatically different in execution. The first, Miernik Dossier, is the most experimental. It using a documentation review as the framing device, and the reader is meant to be a government official examining various reports from a spy operation.

The Tears of Autumn is a conspiracy thriller with Christopher developing a novel theory about the Kennedy assassination. Be sure to read this before you read Last Supper as it is partially a sequel to that book. This one is a bit bleak.

The Secret Lovers precedes Tears of Autumn chronologically and is the most conventional spy novel of the bunch. It will be one of the finest spy novels you read, but it is at heart a basic story of betrayal and identity.

With the Last Supper, McCarry goes epic. The time scale is much longer, starting just after WW1 and ending in the early 80s. It spans two (maybe three) generations of the Christopher family and their strong wills and great misfortune. There are many more characters and non-obvious interactions. I think James Ellroy read this one, as I can see how the murky moralities and actions of the main characters influenced the LA Quartet.

While these books are different, together they paint a fascinating view of the world of espionage as a machine that churns up its participants, but they keep coming back for more. The overall tone is realist as to what can be achieved although an element of despair creeps into the final book. These are consistently good books and I will continue reading them.

[Maureen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I never really understood what was happening in this story. I kept reading until the end and still did not get it.

[Doubledf99.99 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second reading of this fast pace page turner did not disappoint, covers Paul Christopher and the Outfit crew from from their earlier days in Germany, Burma, Vienna, Vietnam and Washington DC.

[Nathan Chattaway · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disjointed, grotty and boring. Somehow, this book managed to have most of the action happen "offstage", with characters recounting it to each other later.
This author is overrated.

[Michael Martz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles McCarry has created such a great espionage character in Paul Christopher that he's written at least 3 (by last count) novels to tell his backstory. I guess when you've witnessed and participated in so many history changing efforts, that level of detail is well-deserved.

After a passage describing the murder of Christopher's lover, 'Last Supper' reaches into the time before Paul was born, moves into his birth and early years, and proceeds through his growth into a top-notch spy. Along the way we're treated with descriptions of his brilliance, quirky personality, loves, and most importantly, his recruitment into the earliest version of the CIA. Larger than life figures abound in these pages, and so does deceit and duplicity. That makes for a pretty good story.

McCarry's writing is not quite as smooth as it later became and the dialogue seems a bit dated at times, but overall it's well done. What was seemingly biographical fiction filled with episodes that 'explained' Paul Christopher morphed toward the end into a classic spy 'whodunnit', as it became apparent that a Russia agent was living among the early CIA pioneers. It's resolved properly, and surprisingly, at the conclusion.

Last Supper is a solid attempt to fill in the blanks on one of the most enduring characters in American spy fiction and is definitely worth a read if you're a fan of the genre.

[Ian Robb · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good book in the author’s Paul Christopher series. Traces Paul’s family from before he was born, through the loss of his mother, death of his father. All the time there are conspiracies and there seems to be a mole most of the way through. Wolkowicz, who is always there for Paul and everyone in American security, it seems, is it. I really enjoyed this book. It has a depth of plot and is a good, SLOW, read. I should read it again. I read this in Victoria

I read it again May 2007 and it is a great book. This book puts flesh on Paul’s life. He and other characters appear in many of the novels. In several of McCarry’s books there appear characters who are rich and have been educated at Yale, Boolah Boolah. He mentions the Skull and bones secret society in this book to which Waddy belongs (as does George W bush). The main reason for Wolkowicz being a traitor is how he and other poor boys are treated by Yale grads like Waddy.

[John Treanor · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Read" this one as an audio book via audible.com. That certainly colored my reaction to the book. Not sure that I'll do that again except on long drives or flights. The scope of the book was pretty epic, covering Germany in the late 30's, the war in Burma, post-war Berlin and modern-day France and Washington. You're probably better off reading the Tears of Autumn first, as that is helpful understanding some of the references. The subject is Paul Cristopher, a member of "The Outfit" or CIA. It covers his family history and their own recruitment into the CIA, his mom's kidnapping by the Gestapo and whole sections of the book are devoted to the other main characters. I think I would have enjoyed and been able to follow this better by actually reading it, but a decent listen....

[Alan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was dissappointed. Was looking back to characters from later-published Old Boys. Shares some of the tone and panorama, but the narrative line didn't appeal.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

While often promoted online as the fifth Christopher family novel, it is only necessary to have read The Tears of Autumn to follow the narrative, while the events of The Secret Lovers include some of the same characters, but this book and that book don't seem to fit together.

Told through four long episodes, we follow the development of CIA operations, here called "The Outfit," beginning with action behind enemy lines during WWII, continuing in post-WWII Berlin, then to Vietnam, and finally to Washington, D.C., in the early 70s. A group of operatives essentially grows up together until they are in the leadership of the agency. While not as good as McCarry's best, The Miernik Dossier, this is an excellent spy novel. 5 stars.

The effort to fit everything in this series of novels into the life of one character, Paul Christopher, reminds me of James Fenimore Cooper writing The Leatherstocking Tales; the ages of Christopher in the various stories, like those of Natty Bumppo, don't make sense. I conclude the stories are variations on a theme, just as Batman can't have done everything in all the Batman comic books, while he is still Batman at the start of the next comic. Christopher can't have done everything in the previous novels and this novel, yet when I start the next novel, he will still be Paul Christopher.

I wonder if McCarry was like J.D. Salinger, who is said to have spent decades writing stories about a fictitious family that he couldn't get out of his head.

The portion of the book set in WWII Burma is great writing, but seemed impossible to me after reading The Hundred Days of Lt. MacHorton and some reading about the Chindit disaster.

The portion of the books set in post-WWII Berlin corresponds with the time and place of Thomas Berger's Crazy in Berlin..

GREAT narrator!

[Douglas Sainsbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a new admirer of Charles McCarry's spy novels. Having read several already (albeit it inadvertently out of chronological order because I couldn't find a bona fide listing; therefore, I used publication date, but it is not a good guide). I enjoyed this book as it provided a treasure trove of back story with regard to the Christopher family. Paul's father was involved with the OSS (predecessor of the CIA) back in the early decades of the 20th century. The profile of the father provides the reader with the development of the Paul character. This book spans time from the 1920s to the 70s and chronicles the growth of US intelligence. Paul's adventures include a 10 year stint in a Chinese prison. Life was tough there. He returns to the US and we are introduced to his first love, Molly, who is whacked by a speeding car. We are allowed to learn how the Outfit (CIA) operated; how its members displayed both trust and betrayal, and how they operate within the framework of tradecraft (the spy business). Paul gets reacquainted with the wife of an Outfit member, her name is Stephanie. They become lovers and she enables him to finally express stifled emotions from his days with Molly. The Outfit upper management suspects a traitor in its midst and the plot races through several twists and turns to a surprise conclusion. A fun story of the code of the Outfit and an insight into Paul's personality. The writing, as usual, is excellent.

[John Fullerton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Deighton territory: an aristocratic German-American family's experiences in WW2 and immediately afterwards, as the Cold War slouches with bloody paws onto the page. The American and UK characters are mostly upper crust, the Yale, Harvard, Oxbridge set, moneyed and self-assured, except for the working-class Wolkowicz, brutal and highly effective, who turns out to be his own man in surprising ways. Another Bernie Samson, perhaps, who is rather tame by comparison with this Caliban of a character. There's also Ilse, his deeply wounded German squeeze who turns out to be rather more than simply a victim of the meat grinder of history.
McCarry is the Patrick White of espionage fiction; his books are beautifully written, witty, ironic, funny and at times, violent in ingenious ways. I sensed that the author, a former CIA officer, was enjoying himself hugely writing these highly successful novels.
There's something else here: it seems to me to be a portrait of America's brief period of innocence, between the defeat of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan on the one hand and the reluctant taking on of the imperialist mantle of exhausted and impoverished European powers. The role of global cop seems to have killed off the ideals of peacetime for good, and we're still struggling with the consequences.
A marvelous novel, full of surprises; it's entertaining, gripping, amusing, erudite and full of fun.

[Diogenes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spellbinding. The second in this series, if read chronologically, this is an espionage story like no other. While the Christophers are major players, an enigmatic character becomes the center of a vast deception deftly masterminded against the fledgling American spy apparatus and the more experienced British and Russian agencies. Surprises, twists and unexpected turns permeate.

Recommendation: Read this series in chronological order rather than in order of publication:

Bride of the Wilderness (Christopher's ancestors)
Last Supper [in part] (Christopher's parents)
Christopher's Ghosts
The Miernik Dossier
Secret Lovers
The Tears of Autumn
Second Sight (Christopher is a peripheral character)
Old Boys (Christopher is a peripheral character)

[False · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been reading all of McCarry's work: fiction and non-fiction. His books are amazing and such fascinating character studies in the world of high powered espionage. It features one of McCarry's ongoing protagonists, Paul Christopher, and his shadowy world of deceits and betrayals and how it penetrates the psyche of the men and women who dwell there. And the locales. You are never in one spot: D.C., Paris, New York, Vietnam, Vienna, Germany, Russia. McCarry writes for grown-ups. Tom Cruise won't be tossing some computer generated explosive to save the world. No one comes out without interior or exterior damage in these books.

[Bernardas Gailius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dar viena labai gera McCarry knyga. Rekomenduotina visiems, kas domisi žvalgyba ir ypač amerikietiška jos versija. Iš tikrų ir išgalvotų faktų apie JAV užsienio žvalgybos susikūrimą Antrojo pasaulinio karo metu ir jos ankstyvuosius žygius prieš sovietus pokaryje McCarry supynė kelias viena į kitą įmautas istorijas, kurios ir kiekviena atskirai būtų įdomios, o suraizgytos tarpusavyje intriguoja dar labiau. Aišku, mąslus stilius, ramus pasakojimo tempas ir labiau žmogiška drama negu veiksmu grįsta pabaiga - ne kiekvienam. Bet kas pripažįsta, kad šnipų romanas - taip gali būti "tikras" romanas, tas neturėtų nusivilti. Aš tikrai nenusivyliau

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

McCarry's reputation as the US John le Carré is well-deserved, & this novel is his version of the Karla trilogy.

That said, McCarry is also racist, sexist, homophobic, & reactionary. However, like Balzac or James Ellroy, McCarry's reactionary politics sometimes gives him vicious insight into class & national politics. But, unlike Balzac or Ellroy, McCarry's prejudices often led him into howlingly ridiculous stereotypes, wish-fulfillment, reactionary cope, & potboiler moralism, especially in this novel, so I cannot recommend this novel as unhesitatingly as I recommend his *Miernik Dossier*, *Secret Lovers*, or *Better Angels*

[Janine Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boeiend verhaal over spionage,dubbelspionnen, verraad en oprechte vriendschap. Het begint in Duitsland tijdens de tweede Wereldoorlog en vervolgens over diverse operaties waar Amerika en se VS elkaar bespioneren. Toch is het eigenlijk een verhaal over vriendschap, vertrouwen en hoe de hoofdpersoon Paul Christopher er achter komt hoe zijn vader is vermoord en wat de waarheid was achter de verschillende operaties die ‘de ploeg’ uitvoerde.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A clique of men comprise The Outfit, a renegade spy ring. What they are after is unclear but they spend time going after each other. The usual ingredients of spy rings within spy rings, sex, drinks, secret sewers in the enemy's territory, torture, imprisonment, many murders just didn't add up to an espionage book for my tastes. The writing was good but not so sure about this plot. It was just ok for me.

[Justin Ridgell · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second favorite book of the series, The Last Supper does not disappoint. The story is rich and full of character development. McCarry's style of writing is tight but detailed. He draws on his own experience to describe spy-craft very well. Paul Christopher still remains one of my favorite characters in any book series. Despite being the fifth book released, this is an excellent book for somebody who is interested in getting introduced into the Paul Christopher series.

[Snidely · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really don't understand why so many people rate this book highly. I found the story to be a seemingly rudderless plot with meandering directions that never fully made sense or disclosed its intended destination.
It took some perseverance to make it to the end, in the hope that more clarity would be provided. There was some, a bit, but not enough to justify the effort to get there. I can't recommend this book.

[Shary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my favorite Charles McCarry so far. I think I've decided that reading his novels is better (for me) than listening. This one delves into Paul Christopher's backstory: his parents, how he joined "the Outfit," and many of his fellow spooks. Probably best to have read The Tears of Autumn first, but not critical. Not a fast read, but enjoyed the many threads.

[GEORGE MENCKE · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story was one of the best novels I’ve read in the recent past. I hope it’s made into a movie, and the movie does the book Justice. The author did an amazing job in weaving a plot and creating complex characters.
The author captures the mood of the post World War II era and the paranoia and fear in the United States.

[Randy Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A page-turner for smart readers. Thoroughly entertaining.

[Grace Shore Kassoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite an engaging "old time" espionage thriller

[Karen C Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second time I have read this book. It is hard to put down. I have read several of the other spy stories by this author and think they are all very good.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love spy v. spy novels . . . always intriguing . . .

[Ema · Rating 4 out of 5]

My mistakes. I don't read the first book.

[Marvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fine plot, good characters, weak end.