The Poet Laureate Of The CIA: My Washington Times 'On Crime' Column On A Look Back At Spy Novelist Charles McCarry

I recently had a discussion with a friend about the origins of COVID-19 and Communist China. 

I suggested that he read Charles McCarry’s spy novel, The Shanghai Factor. 

I covered the novel and the late, great spy novelist in my Washington Times On Crime column in 2020.

 

You can read the column via the below link or the below text:    

A look back at spy novelist Charles McCarry - Washington Times

I wonder what the late, great spy novelist Charles McCarry (seen in the above photo) would make of the COVID-19 outbreak and the Chinese connection, be it the Wuhan “wet markets” or the science labs near Wuhan.

 

McCarry, who died last year at the age 88, set his 2013 novel “The Shanghai Factor” in China.

 

“China, hidden and mysterious, has always interested me,” McCarry said in an interview with Publisher’s Weekly. “I’ve written about it in other novels before ‘The Shanghai Factor,’ and in order to save the life of my series hero, Paul Christopher, locked the poor fellow up for 10 years in a one-prisoner jail in a desert in Xianjing province.”

 

In “The Shanghai Factor,” the narrator, a 29-year-old American intelligence officer in China, explained how he first encountered a Chinese woman named Mei.

 

“One day, as I pedaled along Zhonghan Road, she crashed her bicycle into mine. In those days I was new to the life as a spy, so my paranoia wasn’t yet fully developed, but I immediately suspected that this was no accident. My first thought was that Chinese counterintelligence had sniffed me out and sent this temptress to entrap me. Then I took a look at the temptress and wondered why I should mind.”

 

Later in the novel, McCarry writes, “I was sure from the start that she was on duty, that she reported everything, that she had bugged my room. The funny thing was, she never asked for information, never probed.”

 

Mei, McCarry wrote, showed no curiosity about his past history or life.

 

“Probably this was because she had been briefed about this matter by the folks at Guoanbu, the Chinese intelligence service (within Headquarters called “MSS,” short for Ministry of State Security) and had no reason to ask.” 

 

I enjoyed “The Shanghai Factor,” as I have his other novels, including “The Tears of Autumn” which in my view is his finest novel. This brilliant novel covers the assassination of President Kennedy and the Vietnam War, and although I don’t subscribe to the conspiracy he portrays in the novel, I recommend highly this most interesting and insightful spy novel.

 

McCarry knew something about espionage, having served as a deep cover CIA officer for 10 years in the 1950s and 1960s. The New Republic called Charles McCarry “the poet laureate of the CIA.” He has also been called the American John le Carre, a spy novelist he is often compared to.

 

Writing in The Weekly Standard, P.J. O’Rourke noted, “unlike le Carre, McCarry knows right from wrong. His theme is never that the other side is just like our side except on the other side.”

 

Melanie Kirkpatrick wrote in National Review that “Charles McCarry is sometimes called a ‘conservative John le Carre’ for his highly intelligent espionage thrillers. The difference is that while le Carre presents George Smiley and his Soviet foe Karla as moral equivalents, McCarry believes in the superiority of Western ideals. His spy novels depict the unpleasant, even tragic, actions that are sometimes necessary to preserve those ideals.”

         

Otto Penzler, the publisher and editor of crime and spy fiction, has stated that Charles McCarry was “inarguably the greatest espionage writer that America ever produced.” He also said that McCarry was the most poetic of all American spy writers.

           

Mr. Penzler, whom I interviewed in a previous column, published a Charles McCarry short story for his collection of stories about espionage, “Agents of Treachery,” in 2010. I suspect McCarry will also appear in Mr. Penzler’s upcoming “Big Book of Espionage Stories.”

 

Mr. Penzler also noted, “although there was no nicer or more brilliant man on the planet, McCarry’s gift of prophecy, or anticipating things to come, was chilling.” For example, in his 1979 novel, “The Better Angels,” McCarry anticipated suicide bombers and offered a fictional terrorist plot that predated 9/11 by 20 years.

 

Although he never received the popular fame that Ian Fleming or John le Carre enjoyed, by all accounts he had a full and satisfying life, personally and professionally.

 

McCarry was born in 1930 in Massachusetts, and he served in the U.S. Army as a correspondent for the Stars and Stripes newspaper. He later served as a speechwriter for President Eisenhower and then became a CIA officer. As a deep cover officer, McCarry traveled around the world, both as a spy and as a part-time journalist. He left the CIA in 1967 and wrote his first novel, “The Miernik Dossier,” in 1971.

 

Charles McCarry should be read by every student of espionage and by every reader that loves spy fiction.

 

• Paul Davis On Crime column covers true crime, crime fiction, mysteries and thrillers. 

 

Biographer Adam Sisman: John le Carré And I Worked For Years On His biography. Why Is He Telling His Own Story 12 Months Later?

Adam Sisman, author of a biography of spy novelist Jon le Carre, offers a piece in the British newspaper the Guardian on why le Carre came out with a memoir only a year after the biography was published.

“He’s trying to wrest back control of the agenda,” said my editor, on hearing the announcement that David Cornwell, aka John le Carré, was writing a memoir, only days before the publication of my John le Carré: The Biography. Several people have suggested to me that to bring out such a memoir – The Pigeon Tunnel, published last week – within 12 months of the publication of my book is an “unhelpful” act on his part – even, perhaps, an unfriendly one.

A degree of disgruntlement on his part would not be surprising. Though my biography was written with my subject’s cooperation, it would be disingenuous to pretend that there was no strain between us during the four years I spent writing his life. I don’t think that I should have been doing my job properly if there hadn’t been: I saw it as my job to uncover the truth, however painful that might be. “I’m not sure how much more of this I can stand,” David said to me after one session. I can only imagine how hard it was for him to have a comparative stranger explore every room of his life, from attic to basement, to expose his mistakes and quarrels, and to probe his sore spots. “I think our continuing relationship is an achievement in itself,” David wrote to me in 2014. So it is only right that I should acknowledge his generosity, his tolerance and his continuing sense of humour. There were some tense moments during those four years, but there were also a lot of laughs. “I know it’s supposed to be warts and all,” he said to me at one point, “but so far as I can gather, it’s going to be all warts and no all.”

... The Pigeon Tunnel is subtitled “Stories from a Life”. Its introduction contains a passing reference to my book: “A recently published account of my life offers thumbnail versions of one or two of the stories, so it naturally pleases me to reclaim them as my own, tell them in my own voice, and invest them as best I can with my own feelings.” 

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

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/16/john-le-carre-biography-own-story-adam-sisman 

Biopic Of Former Spy And Spy Novelist John Le Carre Could Be Subject Of New Film

Nick Clark at the British newspaper the Independent reports that the film rights to Adam Sisman's biography of  John le Carre have been optioned by the spy novelist's sons.

Viewers settling in to enjoy the next episode of The Night Manager may soon get a chance to see the man behind the BBC1 espionage thriller. A biopic of the book’s author John le Carré, who worked for MI5 and MI6, could be headed for the screen. 

Adam Sisman, who wrote John le Carré: The Biography, told The Independent Bath Literature Festival last week that the film rights to his book had been snapped up. 

The Ink Factory, the production company behind the BBC’s adaptation of The Night Manager and several other Le Carré novels, has secured the rights, he revealed. 

Simon and Stephen Cornwell, the sons of Le Carré, whose real name is David Cornwell, founded the company in 2010. “David has quite a say in what the Ink Factory do,” Mr Sisman said. “I had to sell it to them, really. What was I selling? The rights to someone else’s life.”

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

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/john-le-carr-biopic-of-mi5-spy-could-be-subject-of-new-film-a6914541.html

You can also read my Washington Times review of Sisman's biography of John le Carre via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/12/my-washington-times-review-of-john-le.html

My Washington Times Review Of 'John Le Carre: The Biography'

My review of Adam Sisman's biography of John le Carre appears in the Washington Times today.

“I’m a liar,” John le Carre explained to Adam Sisman, his biographer. “Born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practiced in it as a novelist.”

John le Carre, 84, aka David Cornwell, is a spy novelist who has received critical acclaim as well as commercial success since 1964 when he published “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.” The former British intelligence officer has published 21 espionage novels, including the Cold War classic, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” which was made into a fine BBC TV seven-part series that starred the late, great Alec Guinness as George Smiley.

Mr. le Carre has led an interesting life, as we learn from the biography. Born in 1931 in Poole, England, he had an unhappy childhood. His father Ronnie was a notorious con man who served time in prison for fraud, and his mother deserted the family when Mr. le Carre was only five. His motherless childhood and his ambivalent feelings toward his crooked father have influenced nearly all of his fiction, especially “A Perfect Spy,” which Mr. Sisman says is Mr. le Carre’s most autobiographical novel.  

... I’ve been a reader and admirer of Mr. le Carre since the 1960s, although I don’t subscribe to his leftist views and his anti-Americanism. His later novels are not as good as his earlier ones, in my view, as they are marred by his political shrillness. Yet I continue to read Mr. le Carre because he is, after all, a fine writer.

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

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/1/book-review-john-le-carre-the-biography/

The Spy Novelist Who Knows Too Much

Robert F. Worth at the New York Times wrote an interesting piece about an interesting man and writer.

Last June, a pulp-fiction thriller was published in Paris under the title “Le Chemin de Damas.” Its lurid green-and-black cover featured a busty woman clutching a pistol, and its plot included the requisite car chases, explosions and sexual conquests. Unlike most paperbacks, though, this one attracted the attention of intelligence officers and diplomats on three continents. Set in the midst of Syria’s civil war, the book offered vivid character sketches of that country’s embattled ruler, Bashar al-Assad, and his brother Maher, along with several little-known lieutenants and allies. It detailed a botched coup attempt secretly supported by the American and Israeli intelligence agencies. And most striking of all, it described an attack on one of the Syrian regime’s command centers, near the presidential palace in Damascus, a month before an attack in the same place killed several of the regime’s top figures. “It was prophetic,” I was told by one veteran Middle East analyst who knows Syria well and preferred to remain nameless. “It really gave you a sense of the atmosphere inside the regime, of the way these people operate, in a way I hadn’t seen before.” 

The book was the latest by Gérard de Villiers, an 83-year-old Frenchman who has been turning out the S.A.S. espionage series at the rate of four or five books a year for nearly 50 years. The books are strange hybrids: top-selling pulp-fiction vehicles that also serve as intelligence drop boxes for spy agencies around the world.         

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

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/magazine/gerard-de-villiers-the-spy-novelist-who-knows-too-much.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 

How John Le Carre Tinkered With His Spy Character

The British newspaper The Telegraph reports that spy novelist John le Carre has donated 85 boxes of material to Oxford University's Bodleian Library.

The material includes photos and hand-written pages about his novels. The pages show how le Carre "tinkered" with his George Smiley character in the process of writing what I believe is his finest novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

You can read the newspaper story via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8343870/John-Le-Carre-donates-archive-to-Oxford-University.html#

Although I don't subscribe to le Carre's anti-American leftist worldview, I think he is a good writer and an interesting writer.

You can read my review of his latest novel, Our Kind of Traitor, which appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, via the below link:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/LeCarreOurKindOfTratiorReview.jpg

You can also read an earlier post on le Carre and his comments regarding his fellow spy thriller writer Ian Fleming via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2010/08/spy-writer-vs-spy-writer-john-le-carre.html