Customer Reviews

Last Call for Blackford Oakes (Blackford Oakes Novel)

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This is only the fourth Oakes novel I've read. My previous reads included Who's On First, Marco Polo (my favorite), and Mongoose. I look forward to reading these stories, but the amount of required reading I must do leaves little time. I must say, that Last Call for Blackford Oakes is a superb ending for such an outstanding spy. Buckley does a terrific job spinning the tale. I've always believed that Buckley writes his novels for the reader and never fails to deliver.

Its 1987 and Oakes is sent to the Soviet Union to prevent yet another assination attempt on Mr. Gorbachev. While he saves the hapless premier yet again, his life becomes complicated by a romantic interlude with Usina Chadinov, a Russian doctor, and also the continuation of his life and death struggle with Kim Philby his sworn enemy.

Like most of Buckley's books, both fiction and nonfiction, his use of the English language is wonderful. Buckley is to the point. He weaves a wonderful story that will keep you turning the pages. Even the slow start is quickly overcome.

I certainly hope that somehow, the series will continue.

Fans of the Blackford Oakes novels may wish to simply skip this book, which ends the series on a depressing note and which seems to have been written with total disregard for what has come before it. In the opening of the previous Oakes novel, A Very Private Plot, Blackford and his wife Sally are, in 1995, about to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary; in this book, which starts in 1987, Sally has already been dead for months. I understand that authors of a series that lasts for decades may need to contract or expand the aging process to fit the needs of a plot (and the use of this device in, say, the Matt Helm or 87th Precinct series has never bothered me a bit), but people who are dead should not be allowed to reappear years later. (Sally is not the only one who rises from the dead, but I won't give away any more plot points.) This book also seems to lack the literary panache of earlier Buckley novels. This is not a terrible book, but, like a TV series that overstays its welcome, there are, I think, one too many books in this series. Buckley should have quit while he was ahead.

In William Buckley's final (?) Blackford Oakes novel, the veteran CIA operative is dispatched to Reagan-era Moscow to thwart a plot to assassinate Gorbachev. The plot is half-baked, but Oakes unexpectedly finds himself involved in both romantic entanglements, in a network of dissatisfied Russian scientists, and in confronting the traitorous Kim Philby.

The best thing about this book is the depiction of Oakes, a man who realizes he's about to embark on the last chapter of his life. His passion for Ursina, the Russian doctor he falls for, is convincingly presented as a final grasp at youth. I was less impressed with the scenes of Russian bureaucrats bickering with each other (firmly standard issue) or with the cameos by real-life figures (Graham Greene, Ronald Reagan). Buckley has no insight into Philby, who comes off as merely a mustache-twirling villain.

Still, although a bit long-winded, this is a good read for anyone with a love of spy novels or an interest in CIA lore.

Bill Buckley is once again brilliant.
This book is fun, full of suspence and has great historial footnotes.
All the characters come to life and since Buckley utilizes real people as characters one has the sense that history is revisited here.
Buckley is a brilliant writer and story teller.
It is hard these days to find good, serious and fun novel writers, well Mr. Buckley is one of those.
My only worry : Is this book his swan song?

First, I must say that I bow to no one as a number one William F. Buckley fan. I have read his books since the sixties, many of which are autographed, reviewed some for the Roanoke newspaper getting his column published in this area and subscribed to National Review. I admit his thinking has shaped many of my own ideas as an educator and political activist. So Bill, forgive me. I cannot endorse "Last Call for Blackford Oaks".

I was delighted when Bill Buckley introduced us to the Blackford Oaks series, and considered his spy novels better than most on the market. As a character I felt Oaks was better than James Bond and cleverer than Sherlock Holmes. Why he chose to write "Last Call for Blackford Oaks" I have no idea. Yes, it is fast moving, yes the dialogue is pure and concise and descriptions are accurate and well done. I especially liked his going into the historical background of the Soviet Union and of course his handling of President Ronald Reagan. Gorbachev is shown for the fraud he was. Though in 1987 and 1988 when "the evil empire" was winding down, the spy apparatus was in full swing. Kim Philby was still a major factor.

The plot is well handled and the book is a joy up until the end. To my surprise the ending is rather contrived and one thinks that Bill Buckley is trying to do what Ian Fleming and Sir Arthur Canon Doyle tried and failed to do. James Bond dies at the end of two novels and Sherlock Holmes at the end of one story. Then somehow they come alive. So be warned Bill, Blackford may prove, as did those fictional characters, it is not easy to kill off a well loved fictional character.

Although a huge Buckley fan, I have never thought the Blackford Oakes series was WFB's best work. Nevertheless, these lively spy novels are fun for his fans as they capture his unique voice and include his weaved in comments on historical people and events (Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Kim Philby, and Graham Green, among others).

If you liked the previous volumes this one won't disappoint. The plot moves slowly at first, and is a bit chatty, but the tension soon builds as the rivalry between Oakes and Philby is rekindled. Oakes's personal stakes only add to the heat. The latter third of the book is quite suspenseful as the reader races to unravel the plot. The ending is abrupt but appropriate for the end of the series (or will WFB's assistant revive it?).

Classic Oakes and classic Buckley.

My first forays into spy novels were at the learned hands of Mr. Buckley's super spy, and I am saddened to realize that there will be no more. LAST CALL is Oakes and company at their best. I picked up the book at 8 pm and finished it far too late into that very night, as I found it very readable and well thought out. Most of these stories you see through and wait for the ending, but this one made me want the ending to be further and further away. A must-read for fans of the genre, as well as fans of Mr. Buckley's elegant prose.

"Three hours later Blackford lay on his bed, the yellow light from the little picture lamp hanging opposite only just reaching her eyes, closed, her breasts softly shaping the sheet that stretched toward Harry Doubleday. But the light didn't reach his sex and the long, light fingers that enveloped it. His lips came together only enough to say her name. She responded by a a further caress. His joy was unbounded, miraculous." (87)

No, that is not a menage a trois you just saw described - Blackford Oakes is Harry Doubleday, and the CIA special agent who once shagged the Queen of England has just tumbled into bed with a beautiful Russian urologist who at one point deigns to be an expert in erectile dysfunction. Ol' Blackie's checkup seems to have gone well. All in all it's a pretty good yarn. The plot centers on the dirty deeds done by one Kim Philby towards the end of his career as an exile in the Soviet Union (maybe 'exile' is a misnomer, as the USSR really was his true home) and Blackford Oakes' various attempts to thwart the notorious agent from MI6 long after he'd dropped any pretense of being 'double'. Sometimes Oakes even succeeds, in spite of such blunders as actually sending a signed letter to the Philby household. Damn that crafty Red! Opening mail that wasn't even his! Sealed mail, at that. Well, it costs poor Blackie dearly, and we thereafter witness his rapid decline into a vortex of unshaven despondency fueled by alcohol, from which he is able to extricate himself only by assigning to himself the singular task of taking out the Cold War's most nefarious spy.

The descriptions of U.S./Soviet diplomacy, especially with regard to an important defection, is very good and makes one nostalgic for the good old days when we had one clearly defined Evil Empire to deal with. Best of all are various cameos by such literary luminaries as Carlos Fuentes and Graham Greene. I'm not sure how seriously we're to take the ending, since Oakes is known to have appeared before a Senate committee in the mid-nineties. We can only hope there is some further revelation in store.

This book is a cheat. A well-written, well-plotted, very clever cheat. But a cheat nonetheless. And it pains me to say it, as an admirer of William F. Buckley Jr.'s craft in writing fiction.

If you're the type of reader who doesn't read every book in a series -- and this is indeed the final book in the Blackford Oakes series -- the author's rewriting of his own characters' history in the last two Oakes novels may not bother you. After all, Buckley wrote the last two books eleven years apart. Many who read them as they came out may not have noticed (some publication reviews I saw of the final novel didn't, for example).

But if you read a series sequentially, and read these last two books (A Very Private Plot and Last Call for Blackford Oakes) right after each other, you'll immediately notice the discrepancy: In the final novel, Buckley directly contradicts key events and revelations of the previous novel. Without apology, without explanation. And not just some minor points, but the fate of two major characters.

Part of this may be because Buckley set A Very Private Plot in both 1986 and 1995, and Last Call in 1987. Perhaps Buckley decided the parallel 1995 story line in the earlier book tied his story hands too thoroughly when he went to write Last Call more than a decade later in real time. No matter what the reason, it's clear Buckley threw out what he'd written about his characters in 1995 when he penned the events of the final book that were set in 1987.

It's like that penultimate episode of Dallas, when Bobby is alive and in the shower and an entire Texas herd of events was just a dream. But one might expect that from a prime-time soap. It's harder to forgive a writer of Buckley's caliber who seemed to pride himself on careful plotting and solid storytelling.

Last Call is an excellent novel, one of the best, if not the best, of the series. But its standalone brilliance is dimmed by the damning contradictions when it's put alongside the previous book's story. If you read the last two books sequentially, try and ignore what happens in the 1995 narrative in the second-to-final novel. Otherwise, you'll realize, you're reading what likely are a pair of final novels in the series -- the first one that Buckley wrote with dual time lines, and then the second, superior yet incompatible tome he probably wished he'd written eleven years earlier.

William F. Buckley Jr has entertained readers for twenty years with the exploits of Blackford Oakes, CIA spy extraordinaire. In what will be the final Oakes novel by Buckley, Oakes is summoned out of semi-retirement for one last mission.

The setting for the novel is 1987. President Ronald Reagan dispatches Oakes to the Soviet Union to thwart an attempt on President Gorbachev's life. In the process, Oakes becomes romantically involved with a lovely Russian dissident and then embroiled in a bitter conflict with his arch-nemesis, the traitor Kim Philby. The struggle between the two master spies is absolutely ruthless and can only ended by death.

The novel wanders from the United States to exotic locales in Russia, Mexico, and Cuba as Buckley tours the battlefields of the waning Cold War. In literate, knowing fashion, he manages to weave in appearences by a variety of real-life personalities. In the process, he also manages to roll up the loose ends of Oakes' long and adventurous life.

This novel is recommended to fans of William F. Buckley Jr's spy fiction, especially those curious about the fate of Blackford Oakes. In the acknowledgements, Buckley does leave a faint hint about future possibilities by one of his collaborators.