Christopher's Ghosts

March 12, 2007
Veteran McCarry (The Tears of Autumn
) remains a compelling storyteller, as shown in his latest spy thriller, which chronicles the early career of his series hero, Paul Christopher. In 1939 Berlin, 16-year-old Paul struggles, with his American novelist father and German aristocrat mother, against the Nazi rulers of Germany. The Christophers are refined intellectuals and known to be sympathetic to the persecuted Jews. A sadistic SS officer, Major Stutzer, takes pleasure in harassing Paul, who has fallen into an impassioned but forbidden love affair with a Jewish doctor's daughter. As war breaks out, Paul barely escapes, while his lover meets a horrible fate at Stutzer's hands. Flash forward to 1959: Paul, now one of the CIA's top operatives, undertakes a clandestine operation in East Berlin, where the Soviets have recruited a certain ex-Nazi officer to train their Arab allies. Can Paul finally face his old nemesis and put the ghosts of the past to rest? The book speeds toward a satisfying, inevitable conclusion.

Starred review from April 1, 2007
Effectively a prequel to McCarry's series of outstanding novels featuring master spy Paul Christopher (e.g., "Old Boys"), this exciting tale presents the prolog and denouementtwo periods separated by 20 haunted yearsof one of CIA agent Christopher's most dramatic career problems. Born of a German mother and an American father and living in 1939 Nazi Germany, Christopher leads an almost idyllic life with his wealthy and cultured parents. He falls in love with Rima, 16 years old like himself but one-quarter Jewish, so she is subject to the whims of psychopathic Nazi tormentors. That is not all: Christopher's beautiful mother becomes the target of powerful Nazi official Reinhardt Heydrich's insidious romantic attentions. But it is Heydrich's henchman, Stutzer, who causes the deaths of Christopher's parents and Rima and thus becomes Christopher's archenemy and the object of his expert vengeance in the 1950s. 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, given the author's own CIA history (he was an intelligence officer during the Cold War). Enthusiastically recommended for all public libraries.Jonathan Pearce, Stockton, CA

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