Charles McCarry's The Miernik Dossier is chosen by novelist Alan Furst as one of the Five Best spy tales ever written in The Wall Street Journal: "With The Miernik Dossier, Charles McCarry introduced us to Paul Christopher, the brilliant and sensitive CIA officer who would appear in a series of perhaps more widely known novels, such as The Secret Lovers and Second Sight. The book itself is the “dossier” in question: the reports and memoranda filed by a quintet of mutually mistrustful espionage agents, including a seductive Hungarian princess and a seemingly hapless Polish scientist, who undertake to drive from Switzerland to the Sudan in a Cadillac. It is a travelogue that bristles with suspicion and deception—but don’t listen to me, listen to a certain highly acclaimed spy novelist who reviewed McCarry’s literary debut: “The level of reality it achieves is high indeed; it is superbly constructed, wholly convincing, and displays insights that are distinctly refreshing. A new and very welcome talent.” Good call, Eric Ambler."
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Blog: The Winged Elephant (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: christopher's ghosts, Tears of Autumn, The Better Angels, second sight, the miernik dossier, shelley's heart, paul christopher, Charles McCarry, Add a tag
Blog: The Winged Elephant (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Charles McCarry, Tears of Autumn, s, The Better Angels, second sight, Last Supper, Miernik Dossier, shelley's heart, Add a tag
Variety reports that writer/director/producer David Koepp will adapt the Charles McCarry novel Shelley's Heart into a political drama called "Article II" that he'll direct for Columbia pictures! A new hardcover edition of Shelley's Heart will be published by Overlook in April.
Shelley's Heart was originally published in 1995 to great acclaim. The novel is centered on the first presidential election of the twenty-first century, bitterly contested by two men who are implacable political rivals but lifelong personal friends, is stolen through computer fraud. On the eve of the Inauguration, the losing candidate presents proof of the crime to his opponent, the incumbent President, and demands that he stand aside. The winner refuses and takes the oath of office, thereby setting in motion what may destroy him and his party, and bring down the Constitution. From this crisis, McCarry, author of the classic thrillers The Tears of Autumn and The Last Supper weaves a masterpiece of political intrigue. Shelley’s Heart is so gripping in its realism and so striking in its foresight that McCarry’s devoted readers may view this tale of love, murder, betrayal, and life-or-death struggle for the political soul of America as an astonishing act of prophecy.
Blog: The Winged Elephant (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Charles McCarry, christopher's ghosts, Tears of Autumn, The Better Angels, Last Supper, Miernik Dossier, Add a tag
Charles McCarry's 1979 thriller, The Better Angels, is reviewed in the Toronto Star: "In the course of Charles McCarry's recently released thriller, The Better Angels, Arab terrorists lay plans to crash domestic passenger planes into Western targets. Ah, the unwary reader concludes, McCarry is borrowing from the most terrible episode in early 21st century American history. No, no, the more informed reader realizes, McCarry isn't repeating history. In a remarkable feat of prescience, his book actually anticipates future events. McCarry wrote and published The Better Angels in 1979. Now, in a worthy venture, the American publisher Overlook has launched a program of reissuing McCarry's past novels in new hardcover copies. The series begins with The Better Angels, which happens to be a timely choice for more reasons than McCarry's foreshadowing of 9/11. This kind of extravagant stuff sounds like leftovers from a lame Tom Clancy novel, but in McCarry's sophisticated hands, the material becomes engrossing and convincing. McCarry's own background is in diplomacy and espionage. A man now in his 80s, he began his political life in the Eisenhower administration and later worked as a CIA undercover operative for nine years. He says his two writing influences are Somerset Maugham and Richard Condon. His books reflect the civilized treachery of Maugham's spy novels and the subversive imagination of Condon's thrillers. The talent for predicting is exclusively McCarry's own. Apart from getting 9/11 right, he seems to have been one of the earliest thriller writers to work computers into his plot. As an instrument in Horace Hubbard's machinations, his number one assistant gets "computers talking to one another." It's true that only a minute group of people in the entire world are aware of computers in The Better Angels, but it seems remarkable that, as early as 1979, McCarry even considered a computer as an essential plot device. It seems certain that McCarry's imagination, freewheeling and abundant as it was in 1979, would never have conceived of a Sarah Palin appearing as any party's vice-presidential candidate." - Jack Batten
Blog: The Winged Elephant (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Tears of Autumn, The Better Angels, second sight, Charles McCarry, Add a tag
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran Scott Timberg's recent Q&A with the legendary Charles McCarry, author of two recent hardback reissues: Second Sight and The Better Angels. Here's a short excerpt:
Blog: The Winged Elephant (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Charles McCarry, The Better Angels, Add a tag
In a rare interview published in The Los Angeles Times today, Charles McCarry talks about his prophetic thriller The Better Angels, first published in 1979 and now being reissued in hardcover by The Overlook Press. Scott Timberg writes: "Despite unceasing critical support and strong sales in the 1970s, McCarry's novels were available in later decades only in used bookstores. But since 2005, the Overlook Press has been gradually reissuing all his work, and this month they're publishing The Better Angels. The novel, originally published in 1979 and set in the '90s, reads like a prehistory of the Sept. 11 attacks: While most of it takes place in Washington, D.C., the book's plot is set in motion by a rabble-rousing Arab Muslim leader and a Middle Eastern terrorist who once exploded planes over Israel."
Blog: So many books, so little time (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: "i don't like reading that much", Add a tag
Like this note I got from a kid on Myspace: "I just got done reading Shock Point. It was amazingly good! I haven't read many books but this one, I couldn't put down. I chose this book as my summer reading book and I don't like reading that much but I figured I had to start because tomorrow I start school! So last night, I decided to give it a try and I read the whole book in a few hours! It was sooo good!"
I can't imagine my life without books - I hope i opened a door for him. In a second note to me he said, "I'm trying to focus more on reading and my academic studies and reading Shock Point let me know that there are actually fun books to read, I would've chosen to read this book over watching a movie!"
If I was going to pick a time to receive this note, it would be now. I need it for reasons I won't go into...
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