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Searching... Silver Falls Library | FIC MCCARRY | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic McCarry, C. 2015 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Author of The Tears of Autumn and The Shanghai Factor , Charles McCarry is widely regarded as one of the finest modern espionage novelists. His latest masterpiece, The Mulberry Bush , burns with the fury of the wronged, as personal vendetta and political idealism collide.
In a rose garden in Buenos Aires, an unnamed American spy meets the beautiful daughter of a famous Argentinean revolutionary. He becomes infatuated, and so does she. But he is no ordinary spy--he is an off-the-books lone wolf who spent his first five years working for "Headquarters" hunting terrorists in the Middle East. Unbeknownst to his lenient handlers, he is loyal to a hidden agenda: to avenge his father, who was laughed out of Headquarters many years before. In the sultry young Argentinean, the spy thinks he has found an ally. Like his father, her parents also met a terrible fate. But as his path becomes further entwined with hers, the spy finds himself caught in a perilous web of passions, affiliations, and lies that spans three continents and stretches back to the Cold War.
A potent and seductive novel, The Mulberry Bush explores what happens when the most powerful political motivator is revenge.
Author Notes
Albert Charles McCarry Jr. was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on June 14, 1930. He enlisted in the Army, where he wrote for Stars and Stripes and edited a weekly Army newspaper in Bremerhaven, Germany. He was a dishwasher and newspaper reporter before becoming an assistant and speechwriter to Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell. After two years, McCarry was recruited by the C.I.A. He worked for nine years as a deep cover operative in Europe, Asia and Africa.
He became an author of both fiction and nonfiction. His fiction works included Ark and The Paul Christopher series. His nonfiction works included Citizen Nader and three memoirs - two written with Alexander Haig Jr. and one written with Donald T. Regan. McCarry died from complications of a cerebral hemorrhage caused by a fall on February 26, 2019 at the age of 88.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Former CIA operations officer McCarry's many novels reflect his insider's knowledge of spy craft. This time he has concocted a splendid revenge tale in which the young and brilliant unnamed narrator sets out to take down the CIA spy masters responsible for destroying the career (and spirit) of his estranged but not unloved late father. He quickly works his way upward in the agency. Then, on assignment in Buenos Aires, he meets Luz Aguilar, the beautiful and influential daughter of two revolutionaries killed by the Argentinian police. He decides to woo and conscript her into assisting him in avenging both of their late fathers. Reader Fass provides the narrator with a soft-spoken, almost gentle conversational voice that proves surprisingly appropriate, even for a tale as hard-edged as this. After all, the narrator is engaged in a mind game that requires a calculated coolness. There are some moments when his emotions are unleashed and others when his calm turns sharply cynical. Thanks to the plot and its presentation, this is a revenge dish served cold and satisfying. A Grove/Atlantic/Mysterious hardcover. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Classic noir themes of trust, motive, and tarnished ideals spin through this mordant, cerebral thriller about an agent on a two-tiered mission. Veteran thriller author and former CIA op McCarry opens this latest with a cracking good setup. The narrator, an intelligence agent never named, bitterly recalls his father's fate at the hands of Headquarters, an agency that clearly represents the CIA. To spite his bosses for thwarting his career, the father, acting independently, took in a Russian spy whose plea for amnesty may have been the genuine article or a ploy to infiltrate Headquarters, an uncertainty the father hoped would frustrate his superiors. Outraged by this dark prank, the men at Headquarters cut the father loose, stripping him of his benefits. In vivid, stinging scenes, the son recalls his father's swift, tragic demise and vows revenge: he'll pursue a mission that seemingly benefits, but really devastates, Headquarters. The narrator's bilevel junket sends him to Buenos Aires, where he works with, and against, a group of revolutionaries with ties to Russia. He falls in love with one of them, Luz, a voluptuary who seems to have wandered into the plot from a 1960s Bond movie and/or a gig at the Playboy Mansionshe spends most of her time in bed pleasuring the narrator. This lack of development extends to other secondary characters, dogging the novel, especially in its midsection. Here, the narrator works through a cat's cradle of agents and terrorists. Their uncertain, shifting, and negotiable actions lucidly illustrate the methods of spies at work, but as these characters are defined by little more than their intentions, their scenes become redundant. The narrator's handlers, a nest of sly snakes, are somewhat more sharply developed. They send the narrator on a final errand that bookends the tale's swift, exciting start and reaches a splendidly ironic resolution. Good enough while it lasts, but richer characters would have made it last longer. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* McCarry's unnamed protagonist has a PhD in Islamic history and is fluent in several languages spoken in the Muslim world. He's on his way to an academic career, until he finds his father, once seen as a potential director of Central Intelligence, reduced to panhandling and living on the streets of Washington. The son abruptly decides to follow in his father's footsteps with the intention of making the agency pay from within. He spends six lonely, dangerous years undercover in the Middle East, identifying terrorists who are dispatched by special-ops teams. His work makes him a legend at the Company, and he is offered the chance to propose his own next operation, which is to cultivate Luz, the beautiful daughter of two legendary, deceased Argentinian revolutionaries. But cultivation becomes passion, love, marriage, unlikely affiliations, and dangers. McCarry (The Shanghai Factor, 2013) again creates a richly engaging world of spooks, double agents, terrorists, and Company characters and culture, all delivered in prose that is variously concise, discursive, amusing, insightful, and often gorgeous. The Mulberry Bush is outrageously entertaining.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
McCarry's (The Tears of Autumn) latest espionage thriller features a story that goes back a generation and ranges from Soviet-era Moscow to the Dirty War in Argentina to the bazaars of the Arabian Peninsula, as the listener is taken on a crash course of the trade-craft of spies. The main character is a legendary, but unnamed, American agent, the son of a brilliant but humiliated spy, whose plans for revenge involve a relationship with the beautiful daughter of Argentine revolutionaries and simultaneous crosses and double-crosses with both headquarters and KGB spymasters. -VERDICT Narrated by the excellent Robert Fass, this brilliantly crafted novel makes a superb audio-book. ["McCarry...dazzles us with smart dialog, fascinating characters, and local exotica of wonderful variety and authenticity": LJ Xpress Reviews 6/18/15 review of the Mysterious hc.]-Scott R. -DiMarco, -Mansfield Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.