Customer Reviews

Christopher's Ghosts

5 star:		(2)
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2 star:		(1)
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Please, do yourself a HUGE FAVOR, and utterly ignore and dismiss the above sited review. This novel is SUPERB -- as are all the other works by Charles McCarry. The vast majority of literary critcs, and authors such as the great John Le Carre agree -- so take that for what it's worth (which is, of course, a great deal).

Charles McCarry takes a page from the Alan Furst playbook, setting the first half of his novel in pre-war Berlin. He perfectly captures the pervasive fear and nervous conformity that must have dominated the city in those days. The characters are fully realized, there's a heartbreaking love story, a monstrous villian, a young man's quest for vengeance- this novel's got the goods. McCarry's real-world experience as an intelligence officer provides a bracingly realistic view of the spy game in the second half of the story.

As a writer myself, I'm reluctant to find any writer less than good or excellent, particularly one who is both popular and successful! But in spite of some of the publicity about this book, and the delight in it that some college students I know took in it, I found the novel less than exciting. There are many superb books in several categories including the one this falls into--mystery--that engross and/or touch the reader. but this novel about the Nazi era does neither. It isn't that all books about the Holocaust, the cruelty, and the destruction of lives have run their course, but stock situations and characters add nothing to understanding, or a writer's intention to portray sorrow and loss.