Charles McCarry, 88, Spy Turned Master Spy Novelist, Is Dead

I was sorry to read that Charles McCarry, a fine spy novelist who had served for 10 years as a deep cover CIA officer, had died. I like all of his novels, but I rank his spy thriller The Tears of Autumn right up there with Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love and John le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It is that good of a spy thriller. 

The New York Times offers the below in an obituary:

Charles McCarry, a former C.I.A. agent who used his Cold War experiences to animate his widely admired espionage novels, notably “The Tears of Autumn,” a best seller about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, died on Tuesday in Fairfax, Va. He was 88.

His son Caleb said the cause was complications of a cerebral hemorrhage caused by a fall.

The soft-spoken Mr. McCarry followed other former spies into writing fiction, a group that includes Graham Greene, Ian Fleming and David Cornwell, who writes under the pseudonym John le Carré. And over nearly 40 years, Mr. McCarry’s dense plotting, realistic detail and brisk writing style brought him a reputation as one of espionage fiction’s leading practitioners.

“McCarry is the best modern writer on the subject of intrigue — by the breadth of Alan Furst, by the fathom of Eric Ambler, by any measure,” the political satirist P. J. O’Rourke wrote in a review of Mr. McCarry’s “Old Boys” (2004) in The Weekly Standard.

You can read the rest of the obit via the below link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/obituaries/charles-mccarry-dead.html 

You can also read more about Charles McCarry and watch a brief video clip of him via the below link:

mysteriouspress.com/authors/charles-mccarry/default.asp

'The Mulberry Bush’ Is Enriched By Charles McCarry’s Real-Life Spycraft

Charles McCarry's The Tears of Autumn is one of the finest spy thrillers I've read, and Ive been reading spy thrillers since I was a young teenager in the mid 1960s.

This suspenseful and intelligent thriller and McCarry's other fine thrillers are so good that many reviewers have called him the "American John le Carre."

So I'm interested in reading former CIA officer Charles McCarry's latest thriller, The Mulberry Bush. 

Kevin Canfield reviewed the new thriller for the Washington Post.

Charles McCarry has been writing spy novels since the 1970s, and like just a few of his peers, he has made a seamless transition from Cold War thrillers to present-day plots featuring technophile terrorists. But as he demonstrates in his new book, McCarry, himself an ex-CIA operative, hasn’t forgotten the folklore of 20th-century espionage. 

Although “The Mulberry Bush” is set in a post-9/11 world, it’s satisfyingly steeped in undercover tales of a particular vintage. The KGB’s preferred torture methods, the CIA’s South American interventions, MI6’s infamous Kim Philby, who shared British intel with the Soviet Union — McCarry invokes all the above in this intercontinental corker, blending old-time yarns with a contemporary saga of payback and political intrigue.

In keeping with the imperatives of his mission, our 30-something narrator never divulges his name. His goal, however, is quite clear: He wants to get back at those who hastened the downfall of his father, a spy whose career with Headquarters (McCarry’s fictionalized stand-in for the CIA) ended in humiliation.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-mulberry-bush-enriched-by-charles-mccarrys-real-life-spycraft/2015/11/17/40a77e62-8d2c-11e5-ae1f-af46b7df8483_story.html  

The Tears Of Autumn: Charles McCarry's Unbearable Masterpiece

Mark Judge at the Daily Caller offers a piece on a classic spy thriller, Charles McCarry's The Tears of Autumn.

2014 will mark the 40th anniversary of “The Tears of Autumn,” the great spy novel by Charles McCarry. I recently reread the book, and realized that the thesis McCarry posits is still difficult to take, if easy to believe. The story would make a marvelous film, but decades later, no one will touch the implications of “The Tears of Autumn.” It says too much that liberals, and even a few conservatives, won’t like.

... The second thing to mention before getting to “The Tears of Autumn” is “The Shanghai Factor,” McCarry’s new novel. While it isn’t as poetic as some of McCarry’s earlier works, “The Shanghai Factor” is nonetheless a smart and sexy thriller. It’s the story of an unnamed protagonist who works for the CIA in Shanghai. He meets a woman named Mei and, despite his training, starts having sex with her. Things become complicated when Mei turns out not to be exactly who she says, and soon the hero finds himself caught between American intelligence and the Guoanbu, China’s version of the CIA.

... And unlike a writer like John le Carré, who is supinely ambivalent about the superiority of the West, or Hollywood “imaginers” who keep making our enemies neo-Nazis and not jihadis, McCarry has got some huge cajones.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/08/charles-mccarrys-unbearable-masterpiece/

Former CIA Officer Charles McCarry Writes Novel That Takes On Spying In China

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at the Wall Street Journal offers an interview with Charles McCarry, author of one of my favorite spy thrillers, The Tears of Autumn.

Author Charles McCarry, sometimes described as the dean of American spy writers, tackles  America’s complex relationship with China in his new novel “The Shanghai Factor.”

Without revealing too much, Mr. McCarry uses a young American spy to provide a look inside a fictitious multi-billion dollar Chinese corporation and the power it wields across the globe.

Being on the inside is something Mr. McCarry knows firsthand: he worked overseas as a CIA agent under cover for about a decade. He’s also on record defending the CIA, writing an essay for this newspaper in 2009 under the headline “Let’s Give the CIA Its Due.”

“The Shanghai Factor”  is the latest in a string of spy books written by Mr. McCarry dating back to 1973. The author was interviewed by telephone. 

"The Shanghai Factor” is being published early next month by the Mysterious Press.

You can read the interview via the below link:

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/05/09/an-ex-cia-agents-novel-take-on-spying-in-china/