Christopher's Ghosts

Fans of McCarry's CIA operative, Paul Christopher, are here rewarded for their decades of loyalty. This is almost like getting two books for the price of one. In what amounts to a prequel in the Christopher series, the first half of the book takes listeners back to pre-WWII Germany, where Christopher, at age 16, and his family are tormented by a sadistic SS major. In the second part of the book, which takes place 20 years later, listeners find out what happens when Christopher spies the former Nazi in Communist East Berlin. Stefan Rudnicki, a regular narrator of McCarry novels, is clearly in his medium. He handles the many foreign accents superbly and is at his best as the ranting SS butcher. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

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.