Charles McCarry may not be as well known as some of the masters of the spy lit genre, but his work has been every bit as interesting and entertaining as any of the bigger names for over three decades. In The Miernik Dossier, first released in 1973, McCarry introduces American spook Paul Christopher.

The book is supposed to be a file of a "complete picture of typical operation" requested by a Congressional chairman (remember, it's 1973). This dossier consists of memos, reports from field agents and their case officers, transcripts of post-operation interviews, and intercepts of Soviet transmissions.

Set in 1959, the book begins at the UN HQ in Geneva where Christopher holds some unspecified cover job. The UN is rife with representatives of national spy agencies. In addition to Christopher, there's a Brit and a French spy - and possibly others.

Christopher's active social group (they appear to all be in their late 20's) includes members of the British and French spookeries and an enchantingly beautiful and sensuous Russian as we almost certainly learn later as well as a Sudanese Muslim prince and Tadeusz Miernik, a Pole of uncertain provenance. The book centers on the efforts of Christopher and Nigel Collins (the British spy) to figure out if Miernik is a Polish spy run by the Soviets or really just a strange self-doubting low-level Polish diplomat.

McCarry sends them all together on an unlikely journey to deliver a new Cadillac to the prince's father, the ruler of Sudan. It sounds absurd, but somehow it works. McCarry is brilliant at describing characters and situations. The reader joins the other characters in their repugnance and annoyance at Miernik (even his sister, brought out of Czechoslovakia by Christopher, agrees). Ilona Bentley fairly oozes sensuality. Christopher is the epitome of the cool, accomplished professional. In the Sudan, Christopher, et al are drawn into the middle of a fight against Arab Muslim terrorist group backed by the Soviets (remember, this book was published in 1973 about events set in 1959).

Even when McCarry drifts off course, he excels. A bar scene in Naples involving former Waffen SS officers toying with their violin-playing waiter (apparently a concentration camp survivor) is masterful, if entirely unnecessary to the rest of the book.

I think what I most enjoyed was the decided lack of clear answers, which strikes me as entirely realistic. Think spies are ever entirely certain of anything important? I don't; they live in a house of mirrors. Christopher moves back and forth between thinking that Miernik is just an oddly gross Pole with some admittedly unusual talents to being convinced Miernik is working for the Soviets.

In a recent NYT story, Alan Furst that listed the Miernik Dossier as one of his top five favorite spy works. (The others: Our Man in Havana (Penguin Classics) by Graham Greene, The Levanter by Eric Ambler, The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré, and Moura: The Dangerous Life of the Baroness Budberg by Nina Berberova (as Furst notes Moura is not actually a spy novel, but is rather nonfiction written by a novelist). I would add McCarry's brilliant Tears of Autumn: A Paul Christopher Novel (Paul Christopher Novels) to that list.

As well-written and entertaining a spy novel as you will find anywhere, but don't look for tidy endings. McCarry is the best American spy novelist. Tip-top recommendation. ( )

A very brave first book in the Paul Christopher series. It eschews the normal novel form, instead shifting from viewpoint to viewpoint of the characters and the intelligence agencies involved. The uncertainties of this strange world are drawn out and maintained throughout the book, even past the last chapter. Much more satisfying than the neat edges of Bond or much other spy fiction. ( )

I must confess that after the Berlin Wall came down, I had this feeling that that was it for the Cold War spy novel. So I was truly happy to find this book, which was written in 1971, so I could once again relive the Cold War spy experience.

The Miernik Dossier (the first of the Paul Christopher series), is written in a style that one would find if they could infiltrate the files of an espionage agency and open up an actual dossier. The story is told through reports of various agents, intercepted communications, a diary, letters, etc. It tells the story of a mixed group of intelligence agents who normally met for lunch once a week in Geneva among other interactions, who find themselves brought together on a trip to the Sudan. The point of the trip, for Paul Christopher (an American agent under deep cover at the time), is to determine whether or not one of the group, Tadeusz Miernik, is indeed a spy from behind the Iron Curtain and mixed up with a small band of terrorists in the Sudan called the Anointed Liberation Front (ALF). It all starts when Miernik requests to remain working for the World Research Organization in Geneva, after he is contacted from Poland and called back home. His story is that he will be put into prison if he returns, but others think he is Soviet spy who is possibly going to defect to the West as a cover. The trip to the Sudan, ostensibly to take a Cadillac to the father of one of the group provides the vehicle through which Paul can watch Miernik and make reports on his status.

I won't add any more about the plot line, but McCarry is a talented writer who lets the suspense build page after page, and who allows the reader to make up his or her own mind. The characters are very well drawn, and the whole atmosphere of intrigue, deception and spycraft quickly engaged me so that I did not want to put this book down.

Definitely recommended for those who enjoy Cold War-era spy fiction, and anyone who has maybe read McCarry's later works in the Paul Christopher series and missed this one.

Highly recommended. ( )

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