Old Boys

Rating:
Summary: Well written but way too long
Review: Master spy Paul Christopher has disappeared. He went in search of his mother who has not been seen in decades- not since the end of WWII. Paul's cousin, Horace, is sent ashes back from China purported to be Paul's and he is buried with full honors. However, Horace is not convinced Paul is dead and enlists five other retired CIA agents with specialties in regions around the world. Their search places them at odds with a mad Arab terrorist, Ibn Awad, who Horace has tried to kill once before unsuccessfully. At stake is possibly millions of lives.
Charles McCarry has served for years as a deep undercover agent for the CIA. It is this experience that lends a great sense of realism and immediacy to this book. This is the major strength of the work. Spywork can be drudgery and there are many passages that reflect that making the reading of these passages drudgery as well. This book is long- so very very long and unnecessarily so. The stakes are high so should be the level of interest by the reader. However, it is the sheer volume of the book and the mutiple deadend subplots that make the plot so jerky. However, the writing is strong and sure and characters well constructed. I would prefer a tighter plot with a riveting storyline. It is, nonetheless worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: Spies who will be spies
Review: McCarry is a delight. One old spy goes missing - and not for the first time. After a congenial dinner with his cousin Horace, Paul Christopher disappears. Horace gathers together a few of his and Paul's former colleagues (all once employed by the Company) and a worldwide search for Paul is undertaken. It's truly an "old boys"network in this one.

The characters are wonderfully rich and developed. The plotting is beautifully done. While loaded with surprises, none of them require the reader to overcome disbelief. Even the bad guys - and there is no shortage of them - are interesting. And it's all played out in various parts of the world.

This is simply my idea of a great read. It's long at 473 pages, but not a one of them is dull. McCarry is a master of his craft.

Jerry

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Almost 30 years ago, McCarry wrote 2 of the best espionage thrillers ever produced, The Tears of Autumn and The Secret Lovers. Following the success of these books, McCarry produced a series of books involving some of the same characters in those books, particularly his hero, the CIA spy Paul Christopher. These later books were generally good but not at the level of Tears or Secret Lovers. McCarry's characterizations became shallower and the plots of his novels increasingly complicated and implausible. Old Boys, his first espionage novel in years, continues the unfortunate tendencies of his later books. The plot is highly implausible and in fact, not developed well. There is a host of characters, few of them developed well. This is a mediocre potboiler from someone who can clearly do better.

Rating:
Summary: mccarry scores again
Review: As usual Charles McCarry has produced another exceptional thriller. Although it follows the latest twist in the Christopher family history it can be read on a stand alone basis. McCarry's novels are literate and absorbing unlike much of the genre. Sadly this may be McCarry's final work {according to the WSJ review}.

Rating:
Summary: Read this book, and all McCarry's other fiction as well!!!
Review: Charles McCarry has been my favorite author since I picked up a used copy of "Secret Lovers" on the way to the airport more than ten years ago. For some reason he remains undiscovered by most readers -- his books ought to be appreciated not only by fans of espionage fiction, but by anyone who likes a good story that is beautifully written. I have read all the Paul Christopher books, and a couple years ago, thinking that the last one had already been written, re-read them from first to last. This series has a richness of characterization and story, a unique melding of history with fiction, and a literary style that elevates it above any other author's work. Although a unified series, each book has its own merits. The first, Miernik Dossier, is not a narrative, but rather a collection of reports from the field that dance around the truth, and that brillianty illuminate the type of imperfect knowledge that espionage can provide. Current events provide another example. One of the books is a historical romance. Another has some aspects of fantasy/science fiction. This book, "Old Boys", is the only one written in the first person, and does not have one of the Christophers as narrator. Again, it is topical, and can stand alone as an absorbing novel, but in the context of the entire series serves as a capstone to this family's story. I strongly recommend "Old Boys" -- and urge you to read the rest of McCarry's fiction too -- Let's hope this is not, in fact, Paul Christopher's swan song.

Rating:
Summary: The Latest Offering From
Review: Charles McCarry has long been one of the best authors of espionage thrillers, and he doesn't disappoint with his latest novel, "Old Boys." He worked for the CIA years ago and is extremely familiar with the "Company's" history and operations. Obviously, this firsthand knowledge makes his work all the more authentic. I simply do not understand why McCarry is not better known, nor why his books, especially "The Last Supper" and "The Tears of Autumn," are not considered classics. He is certainly in the same literary league with John LeCarre, Alan Furst, Eric Ambler and Ken Follet. I read McCarry's "The Last Supper" a few years ago and it is my favorite book in this genre - absolutely top notch! I have read most of his other novels since then, and have found them all to be superior. McCarry's nuanced, at times poetic, writing style, his ability to create real, flesh and blood characters who will move you, and his fast-paced, taunt storylines, put him at the top of the list for craftsmanship. I immediately picked up a copy of "Old Boys," McCarry's 10th novel, as soon as it hit the stores.

Intelligence agent Paul Christopher, often a major character in McCarry's novels, is present in this one also. Unfortunately, the suave, sophisticated agent's appearance is brief. The novel opens with the aging, but extremely fit, Christopher dining with his cousin Horace Hubbard, another former agent. Dinner is excellent, the conversation interesting, if unremarkable. Paul Christopher vanishes the next day. Unbelievably, his ashes are delivered by a Chinese official to the American consulate in Beijing many months later. Christopher had supposedly died in a remote corner of China. After a memorial service in Washington, Horace, who is not convinced that Paul is dead, recruits four other retired colleagues - a kind of All Star bunch of "Old Boys," to go back into the field to find Christopher. Their first clue is a photograph found in Paul's study revealing an ancient scroll sought by both the US government and Muslim extremists. Hunted and hounded all over the globe, from Xinjiang to Brazil, then Rome, Tel Aviv, Budapest and Moscow, the old pros, with Christopher's beautiful daughter Zarah providing support, search for their comrade and the answers to his disappearance. These men may have mellowed but they are still quick on their feet...and on the uptake.

McCarry does not write "light." Like most of his novels this one is complex and tackles deeper themes than mystery and suspense. His characters are three-dimensional and the writing tight. There is also a nostalgia here for a dying breed, the agents of old who fought and helped to win the Cold War. While a very good read, "Old Boys is not on par with Charles McCarry's best works. I do recommend it, however. It is still a good, long yarn that will hold your attention and leave you spellbound.
JANA

Rating:
Summary: Implausible cloak and dagger
Review: I had a tough time getting into Old Boys, and in the end, I was far from satisfied when I'd finished the book. The notion of a bunch of old timers from "the Outfit" getting the better of their younger, high-tech counterparts of today seemed like a fine idea for a rollicking game of global espionage. Unfortunately, this premise just never gets off the ground. Instead, the group of retirees goes running around the world and with little explanation, keeps turning over all the bits and pieces required to solve their enigma. And the images of supposedly out-of-practice senior citizens suddenly dodging bullets in the wilds of Central Asia or defeating professional assassins half their age in hand-to-hand combat did not do much to lend credibility to the plot. It's a shame because I couldn't shake the feeling that the author had the talent to do a much better job, but chose to go by the numbers instead.

Rating:
Summary: Let Old Boys Sleep
Review: I have read all of Mr. McCarry's other books with Paul Christopher as the central character, and they are all top drawer. This work, unfortunately, has little plot - and what there is of it is uninteresting - little about Christopher, and at the end, the reader does not really care. His mother is the most interesting though confused person in the book, and at the end, we learn little about her motives. All in all, this book does not measure up, sorry to say.

Rating:
Summary: An engrossing thriller
Review: I have to admit that I was so engrossed by the plot that I stayed up almost all night to finish the book. Unlike the guilty feeling I had after enjoying the Da Vinci code while realizing that it was not a great book, I really LOVED this book. I absolutely loved his wild and crazy read of Jesus and the founding of Christianity as a CIA type plot carried out by Roman agents. That chapter in particular, the translation of the "Amphora Scroll," was exceeding clever. Sure, there are implausibilities in the old guys whipping the young guys, but that's what gives the book its spirit. I get the feeling the author had a twinkle in his eye while he wrote this. It's like that movie with Clint Eastwood and Tommy lee Jones (I forgot the title) when they decide to go into space even though they are old geezers. I really enjoyed the lessons on falconry too. This is a first rate spy novel -- if his earlier books are that good, I'm quitting my review right now and ordering them!

Rating:
Summary: Blast from the past
Review: I wish I'd noticed this book's arrival promptly rather than finding it this week on the shelves! I wrote a particularly nasty review of McCarry's last book here and I have felt, for good or ill to his reputation in my sight, that I should immediately read his next. I am most sorry that I didn't get the chance when it might have been most useful. Because this is a very good book!

I've not read McCarry's older works; or at least I don't remember doing so. So I found his most recent foray, my first reading of his work, into the realm of technical detail almost in the same vein as my disdain for SF writers who turn to fantasy to help them with their writing problems. He blew it. This book is a different matter altogether.

We return here to the tradition of Oppenheim, Rinehart, and MacInnes. This is a book about people, not about events and gadgets. There is a premise, that there is a document (or set of documents) that have the potential to change "things". We need not know what those documents may be or exactly how they might change "things". It is quite enough that McCarry convinces us that both in history and the present folks care about that, particularly the folks he writes about. Indeed, as Oppenheim knew most well, it is better for the plot and the reader that we should NOT know. Because this is a book about people.

They are not, generally, people I like. I don't need to. Nor do you. They are interesting people, made interesting by McCarry's deft use of language. We walk into the book with them. We follow them around. And we leave, as discontented as they are, at the end. That, boys and girls, is talent in writing.

This is not a whiz-bang thriller. It is calm.

You may not like that sort of writing. It doesn't sell well these days. I am a great admirer. It is the little pieces of our lives that make drama. McCarry knows this and does it well so I respect and admire him.

Joe