Paul Christopher

The Miernik Dossier is the dazzling first novel, recently reissued, by master spy novelist Charles McCarry. In this riveting, imaginative tale, five international agents embark on a road trip in a Cadillac from Switzerland to the Sudan. Among them are Paul Christopher, an American operative; Kalash el Khatar, the seven-foot-tall Muslim prince; Ilona Bentley, the beautiful half-English, half-Hungarian girlfriend of the British national, Nigel Collins; and Tadeusz Miernik, the shy and bumbling Polish scientist who might be the leader of a terror force that could set the Cold War aflame. Related as a collection of dossier notes written by the five characters, the novel reveals a complicated web in which each spins his or her own deception: each is a spider, and each a spy. The Miernik Dossier is an absolute masterpiece.

Spun with unsettling plausibility from the events surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and featuring secret agent Paul Christopher,The Tears of Autumnis a tour de force of action and enigma. Christopher, at the height of his powers, believes he knows who arranged the assassination and why. His theory is so destructive of the legend of the dead president, though, and so dangerous to the survival of foreign policy, that he is ordered to desist from investigating. But Christopher is a man who lives by, and for, the truth, and his internal compunctions force him to the heart of the matter. Christopher resigns from the Agency and embarks on a tour of investigation that takes him from Paris to Rome, Zurich, the Congo, and Saigon. Threatened by Kennedy's assassins and by his own government, Christopher follows the scent of his suspicion-one breath behind the truth, one step ahead of discovery and death. The Tears of Autumnis an incisive study of power and a brilliant commentary on the force of illusion, the grip of superstition, and the overwhelming strength of blood and family in the affairs of a nation.

Early one morning in West Berlin, a nervous courier delivers the handwritten manuscript of a dissident Russian novel to Paul Christopher. Minutes after the handoff, the courier's spine is neatly snapped by an impact with a passing black sedan. Meanwhile, in Rome, Christopher's wife Cathy takes a famous film director as a lover to stir her husband out of the stoicism that defines his personality. These two seemingly discreet events set in motion a spiral of operational and personal intrigue, leading Christopher from the café of old Europe to the front lines of the Cold War in the Congo. As he secretly arranges the publication of a novel that could bring the Soviet system to its knees, he races to identify the leak that compromised his messenger-and possibly the entire mission. Since his reemergence with the publication of Old Boys, Charles McCarry has been once again heralded as one of the select few espionage novelists who manages to break out of his genre to shine as a brilliant novelist in his own right. The Secret Lovers is McCarry at his best: an exploration of the epic scope of "the great game," but also a riveting psychological portrait of a man ensnared by a profession that never failed to exert its insidious influence outside the professional boundaries-and that, like the facade of diplomacy that outwardly held the Cold War in check, could never contain its violent essence.

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.

The acclaimed author of such suspense classics as The Tears of Autumn and The Miernik Dossier brings us a unique period romance, set in early eighteenth-century Europe and New England featuring the ancestors of his recurring master-spy Paul Christopher. Young, high-spirited Fanny has been fortunate in her civilized upbringing, but the London she has grown up in is riddled with danger and brutality. When a sinister stranger traps her family into debt in order to advance on Fanny, she is forced to take refuge in France, where she meets a young French soldier named Philippe de Saint-Christophe. Their paths will cross again in the New World, where the war between the English and the French is fought with the help of savage Indians on both sides. Together, Fanny and Philippe carve out a fierce, adventurous life in the vigorous, untamed wilderness.

Master spy Paul Christopher is back ... or is he? Charles McCarry is considered by many to be the master of world-class spy fiction, garnering praise from peers and critics alike for his riveting novels. Christopher Buckley wrote that McCarry "is not only one of the best writers in America but one of the most important. He dazzles, from epigraph to epilogue," and the Los Angeles Times hailed his work as "first rate, in the tradition of the best espionage fiction, John Buchan to Eric Ambler and John le Carré.” In this magnificent novel, Charles McCarry returns to the world of his legendary character Paul Christopher-the savvy intelligence agent as skilled at choosing a fine wine as he is at tradecraft, at once sophisticated and dangerous, and no stranger to the world of dirty tricks. Now Paul Christopher has mysteriously disappeared. Months pass, and a memorial service is held for him in Washington. But a group of his retired colleagues-the "Old Boys" from the Outfit-refuse to believe Christopher is dead. Led by Christopher's cousin Horace, the Old Boys embark on a thrilling worldwide search for the master spy and an ancient scroll that may reveal an unspeakably dangerous truth.

With cinematic scope and masterful pacing, Charles McCarry delivers a haunting parable of a man confronted with the ghosts of an entire generation's brutal history. The grand tale begins in 1939 Berlin, where young Paul Christopher and his family are struggling against the rise of Nazi totalitarianism. The Christophers are known to be sympathetic to the persecuted Jews, while sixteen-year-old Paul has fallen in love with the daughter of a Jewish doctor. Their enemy is a sadistic SS officer named Stutzer, who will stop at nothing to destroy the young couple. Twenty years later, top CIA agent Paul Christopher is the only living witness to Stutzer's crimes. As he edges toward a confrontation with this mortal enemy, Christopher is forced to operate in the one theater he had thought he had mastered: his own past.