Customer Reviews

The Miernik dossier

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Charles McCarry is one of the top writers of espionage, suspense/thriller fiction and most definitely in the same literary league with John LeCarre, Alan Furst, Eric Ambler and Ken Follett. McCarry's nuanced, at times poetic, writing style, his ability to create real, flesh and blood characters who will move you, and his fast-paced, taunt storylines, put him at the top of the list for craftsmanship and inventiveness. Therefore, I do not understand why McCarry's books are out of print and have been for some time. In order to read them I have had to look for used book sellers who have his novels in stock at a reasonable price - not an easy task. However, for anyone who reads this review and becomes motivated to search out "The Miernik Dossier" or any of the author's other novels, I urge you to follow through. You won't be sorry - I promise.

I should note that McCarry worked for the CIA many years ago, during the height of the Cold War, and the air of authenticity that permeates his books makes them all the more fascinating and absolutely riveting. His position as one of the "Old Boys," and his knowledge of "The Company" and the political goings-on in the DC Beltway add tremendously to his most original plots.

"The Miernik Dossier," published in 1973, is McCarry's debut novel and also the first book to feature Paul Christopher, the cool, sophisticated American undercover agent - who is to the author what George Smiley is to John Le Carré. The narrative, purely experimental at the time it was written, is comprised of a collection of 89 numbered extracts from intelligence reports made by field agents (from various countries), as well as memos, wire-taps and diaries revolving around a somewhat bumbling Polish exile who might be a double or even triple agent...but then again who might not. No one knows for sure whether Tadeusz Miernik is a good guy or a bad one, or whose side he is on - not American agent Paul Christopher, nor British Intelligence officer Nigel Collins, nor Kalash el Khatar a North African prince, nor any one of the colorful characters who plot, spy and elevate the art of subterfuge to the highest level. One of the novel's highlights involves a trip (mostly by Cadillac) from Geneva to the Sudan with Miernik, Khatar, Collins, a beautiful Hungarian seductress (who might be a spy), and Miernik's sister, who must be smuggled out of Czechoslovakia before she can join the group. There's plenty of dark humor to be found between the pages also.

I have now read almost all of Charles McCarry's books and cannot recommend them highly enough. I have had to go out of my way, as previously mentioned, to acquire his work but am so glad I did. This one is a particular favorite of mine. If you are a fan of John le Carré, authors Furst, Ambler and Follett, you will certainly become a McCarry fan, as are le Carré, Furst, Ambler and Follett. They have all read him and praise him to the sky. ENJOY!
JANA

First McCarry novel for me - found it in paperback in a bookstore in Evanston, Illinois in 1973 or so. MCarry is as good as LeCarre and his Paul Christopher novels, of which this was the first, are as good as spy fiction gets. The Miernik Dossier is an epistolary novel - field reports from Christopher as he works on recruiting Polish diplomat Miernik. If you like your spy novels rich in character development and steeped in the moral ambiguities of the secret world, this is one you should try. (Good luck finding it, though.)

The Miernik Dossier is as good as you want when it comes to character development and overall scope when it comes to a espionage novel. Written in the form of a case file on a Polish operator(or is he?), this format allows for many different views from many different perspectives on the basic plot.

American agent Paul Christopher is the main character as a group of men and women drive from Europe to The Sudan in a Cadillac in 1959 at the height of the cold war. Included in this group are Tadeusz Miernik, a Polish national who may or may not be a communist agent, Sudanese Prince Kalesh, whose moral ambiguity makes for a fascinating character, a British agent, and a concentration camp survivor who is willing to sleep with any and all of the men who is also probably a Soviet agent.

As they make their way south it becomes more and more uncertain that Miernik is in fact a communist provocateur. Christopher is torn between what appears to be strong circumstantial evidence that would confirm Mierniks guilt and his own intuitive instincts that Miernik is too much of a bumbling clod to be an agent.Through reports and interviews with the principals the story unfolds. At the end the utter futility of the mission and the callous manipulation of cold war pawns is unflinchingly shown.

I have read many cold war novels over the years and am glad I discovered this one, for it is truly one of a kind.McCarry's characterizations are nothing short of brilliant as he puts meat on the bones of his divergent cast of characters.

The Miernik Dossier was shockingly good. Before this, I had never read anything by McCarry. In fact, I had never even heard the man's name. I was lucky to come across a review of this re-issued work in a magazine. Now I am collecting everything by him.

The story follows an odd assortment of people, some of whom may or may not be intelligence agents, as they travel south through Europe into Africa. For the entire length of the book you will be wondering and guessing and probably changing your mind many times as to who is working against whom and trying to figure out if Miernik is who he says he is. The writers of the dossier themselves seem to be unsure. In that sense the Miernik Dossier has similar elements to a mystery or detective novel, but yet it goes way beyond that. It is also a highly compelling character study, with each of the group drawn intricately by the author so that you come to know the characters. This makes it all the more suspenseful because these people who you seem to know or possibly identify with in some way may very well not be who you think they are.

The Miernik Dossier is a highly entertaining read. True spy literature, in the vein of Ashenden, that is enjoyable for those who enjoy spy stories, mysteries or simply great writing. I cannot wait to read this book again!

"The Miernik Dossier," Charles McCarry's debut novel, is absolutely brilliant. The book is written in the form of a series of reports from field agents concerning a Polish national who may or may not be a spy. The story is very cerebral and complex with excellent character development and wonderful descriptions of Cold War Europe. The humor underlying many of the agents' reports adds to the brilliance of the book. There are very few contemporary spy novels, or books in general, which come close to the excellence of "The Miernik Dossier".

The Miernik Dossier is one of the finest espionage novels ever written, and a treasured secret of those who write in the genre. Charles McCarry's first novel was overlooked commercially, yet has found critical acclaim from those who seek it out. With good reason, MD is one of the first novels to explore the problem of disinformation and its consequences in the confused world of human intelligence (humint), and only Grahme Greene's "The Human Factor" or LaCarre's "Smiley's People" explores similar themes of the division of the secrets of the heart with duty and love. Well written in an alternating voice of authentic government jargon, with reports blasted in the staccato of facts style taught to any agent (a discipline left over from the telegraph and secure cable systems of the past).

The story follows a small cast of characters as they move from one Mediterranean local to an exotic north African one. They might as well be on a desert island, for each is known well to the other, each agenda is known or suspected, and one will draw a short straw as a sacrifice to their distant masters, where failure and success will both look alike as it is papered over in bureaucratese.

McCarry's flaw is he loves his creation Paul Christopher too much, making him both an object of admiration, envy, heroic example, and pity (spelled out more fully in subsequent novels). Christopher represents the last generation of Ivy Leaguers who were admitted because their father went there rather than merit, and such exclusion and entitlement is assumed to create pathos when the hero in a turn of noblesse oblige becomes a government agent, posing as something or other (usually a Puritan version of a Playboy, stoic to the point of sociopathology, but supposedly selling or writing something).

McCarry's strengths are a voice that rings true, an eye for detail, and well crafted prose. The Miernik Dossier is a very good novel bordering on greatness, and surpasses others in the genre by light years.

A few months ago, I read a book called "Old Boys," an exciting and emotionally involved spy novel about several retired CIA agents. I liked it so much that I sought the author's first novel, originally published in 1973 and recently brought back into print. The Miernick Dossier takes place in 1959 at the height of the Cold War. Written as a collection of reports, transcripts of intercepted phone calls, and other evidence of the spy trade, the story involves a collection of mismatched people of different nationalities, some of whom may or may not be spies or double agents, traveling by car from Switzerland to the Sudan. Many twists and turns abound, and you have to guess who is telling the truth and who isn't. Like "Old Boys," this book is a real page-turner, and the characters are well-drawn and surprisingly real. With the adventure centering around the disruption of a Muslim country, the book didn't even seem dated. I looked forward to reading another book by McCarry. One note: this reprinted edition from the Overlook Press was obviously OCR'd from an old edition, and the proofreading was absolutely terrible. It made me mad. This is a quality book from a quality author, and it deserved to be typeset properly. In the future, I'm going to look for older editions of the old work and not buy the reprints from Overlook Press.

This was McCarry's first novel (and first Christopher novel) that he published after leaving the 'Company' in 1973. What makes this novel unique is the way it's presented. It is a compilation of reports that are from a variety of services (both ours and theirs) that are used to tell the story of a trip by a group of friends (all who are spies for different agencies).

The story itself, is interesting, but the mode in which the story unfolds, by reports of clandestine meetings by the different operatives, overheard conversations, dead letter drops, etc. give the book a feeling of being in the library at Langley and reading through an after action report. It's quite a coupe and brings the story together using an interesting premise.

Your can feel that McCarry has a real ability to write about the clandes- tine world of espionage. I'm looking forward to reading more of his novels.

Paul Christopher, a character in The Miernik Dossier who appears in most of Charles McCarry's subsequent espionage novels, writes in a report: "There is an artistry to what we are doing: spies are like novelists--except that spies use living people and real places to make their works of art." McCarry knows something about the similarities of spies and novelists, having been a CIA operative himself before commencing his career as a writer of spy novels. The Miernik Dossier is his first, and it is excellent.

The story is told in a series of documents: reports, transcripts of recorded conversations, cables, diary entries, and the like. A drawback of this format is the difficulty of developing a character's personality through documents. McCarry solved that problem by having Christopher (an American agent) write very thorough, engaging reports, complete with verbatim accounts of dialog, descriptions of clothing and scenery and body odors, discussions of his observations, fears, and thought processes, and other material that helps set the scene and flesh out the characters. (Amusingly, a document prepared by one of Christopher's handlers complains that Christopher's reports lack organization and are filled with extraneous information.) Perhaps real spies don't write entertaining reports that work well as chapters in a novel, but maybe McCarry did just that when he worked for the CIA. In any event, Christopher's reports (and to a lesser extent, his British counterpart's and Miernik's diary) provide the flavor that makes the novel work as well as it does.

And it does work well. The story is filled with intrigue as the American and British agents accompany a member of the Sudanese royal family and a Polish diplomat on a road trip from Geneva to Sudan. The two spies are operating under diplomatic cover; each knows that the other is an operative but neither can admit it. They suspect that the Pole is also a spy and that he may have something to do with a Soviet-run terrorist group that has recently formed in Sudan, but they're never quite sure what role the colorful, irascible Pole is playing: is he a spy, and if so, what is his mission in Sudan? Add to the mix the Pole's sister and the British spy's girlfriend, both of whom join the trip, and the story becomes almost comical as everyone suspects everyone else of being something other than what he or she seems. Of course, when things are not as they seem, there is a potential for mistaken actions, and in this novel, that risk leads to a powerful ending. Some fast-paced action scenes in the desert add additional excitement to a story that is never in danger of becoming dull.

The Miernik Dossier teaches a lesson that applies not just to intelligence agencies but to all law enforcement agencies: once an intelligence analyst (or, for that matter, a police detective) begins to theorize that someone is a spy (or a criminal), they are likely to look for evidence to support that theory and risk losing their objectivity. For its excellent illustration of that principle as well as its riveting story and sympathetic characters, I would give The Miernik Dossier 4 1/2 stars, edging toward 5.

Charles McCarry may not be as well known as some of the masters of the spy lit genre, but his work has been every bit as interesting and entertaining as any of the bigger names for over three decades. In The Miernik Dossier, first released in 1973, McCarry introduces American spook Paul Christopher.

The book is supposed to be a file of a "complete picture of typical operation" requested by a Congressional chairman (remember, it's 1973). This dossier consists of memos, reports from field agents and their case officers, transcripts of post-operation interviews, and intercepts of Soviet transmissions.

Set in 1959, the book begins at the UN HQ in Geneva where Christopher holds some unspecified cover job. The UN is rife with representatives of national spy agencies. In addition to Christopher, there's a Brit and a French spy - and possibly others.

Christopher's active social group (they appear to all be in their late 20's) includes members of the British and French spookeries and an enchantingly beautiful and sensuous Russian as we almost certainly learn later as well as a Sudanese Muslim prince and Tadeusz Miernik, a Pole of uncertain provenance. The book centers on the efforts of Christopher and Nigel Collins (the British spy) to figure out if Miernik is a Polish spy run by the Soviets or really just a strange self-doubting low-level Polish diplomat.

McCarry sends them all together on an unlikely journey to deliver a new Cadillac to the prince's father, the ruler of Sudan. It sounds absurd, but somehow it works. McCarry is brilliant at describing characters and situations. The reader joins the other characters in their repugnance and annoyance at Miernik (even his sister, brought out of Czechoslovakia by Christopher, agrees). Ilona Bentley fairly oozes sensuality. Christopher is the epitome of the cool, accomplished professional. In the Sudan, Christopher, et al are drawn into the middle of a fight against Arab Muslim terrorist group backed by the Soviets (remember, this book was published in 1973 about events set in 1959).

Even when McCarry drifts off course, he excels. A bar scene in Naples involving former Waffen SS officers toying with their violin-playing waiter (apparently a concentration camp survivor) is masterful, if entirely unnecessary to the rest of the book.

I think what I most enjoyed was the decided lack of clear answers, which strikes me as entirely realistic. Think spies are ever entirely certain of anything important? I don't; they live in a house of mirrors. Christopher moves back and forth between thinking that Miernik is just an oddly gross Pole with some admittedly unusual talents to being convinced Miernik is working for the Soviets.

In a recent NYT story, Alan Furst that listed the Miernik Dossier as one of his top five favorite spy works. (The others: Our Man in Havana (Penguin Classics) by Graham Greene, The Levanter by Eric Ambler, TThe Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré, and Moura: The Dangerous Life of the Baroness Budberg by Nina Berberova (as Furst notes Moura is not actually a spy novel, but is rather nonfiction written by a novelist). I would add McCarry's brilliant Tears of Autumn: A Paul Christopher Novel (Paul Christopher Novels) to that list.

As well-written and entertaining a spy novel as you will find anywhere, but don't look for tidy endings. McCarry is the best American spy novelist. Tip-top recommendation.