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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Clever tale of espionage and madness, but not the author's best work, September 20, 2007
Robert Littell has written some of the best espionage novels ever, with "The Company," "Legends," and "The Sisters" rubbing elbows with the best works of le Carre and Graham Greene. With "The Once and Future Spy," Littell has created a quirky little novel that keeps the reader on edge literally up to the last page.
Littell is a master at creating unsettling tones in his books, and this novel is no exception. Our hero is "The Weeder," a CIA-trained historian whose job is to weed through the chaff of the intelligence world - raw data - to find useful wheat - actionable intelligence. The Weeder is a computer whiz, and toils away in his SoHo loft utilizing a computer program that turns literally any phone on its cradle into a perfectly-functioning bug.
The Weeder is also a man carrying a grudge - a former roommate once gave the Weeder's girlfriend some LSD, with tragic results. This former roommate is now Brian Wanamaker and also works for the CIA, but is up to no good. The Weeder has stumbled across Wanamaker's plot to explode a nuclear device in Iran but make it look like an accident caused by Iranian stupidity. Horrified by this betrayal of America's ideals - the Weeder subscribes to the Revolutionary War ethic of having our actions as well as our cause distinguish us from our enemies - the Weeder begins to send "love letters" to Wanamaker - correspondence letting Wanamaker know that the secret is out and to kill the plan.
But Wanamaker is an ambitious, ruthless man, and so he calls in Rear Admiral Pepper Toothacher (Littell is wonderful with names) to "walk back the cat" and plug the leak. And Toothacher, armed with a lifetime of intelligence work, a pair of assassins, and a dark secret, begins the hunt for the Weeder.
Sounds conventional, right? Wrong! This is Robert Littell, after all. The Weeder shares a fascination with American patriot Nathan Hale, and believes that they are long-lost relatives. The Weeder can fancy himself living "Nate's" life and become lost in the rivers of history. Littell tells Nathan's story expertly, but eventually the reader has to face the fact that the Weeder may in fact be a little nuts . . . is he imagining the whole thing?
Littell keeps the reader jumping back and forth on the question of the Weeder's sanity up until the last page. Nothing appears to be what it seems, even in the last paragraph . . . or does it?
I give this novel four stars merely because the story isn't as epic or sinister as Littell's best works, but that doesn't mean that "The Once and Future Spy" is anything less than a first-rate novel.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Little Too Ambiguous...?, July 9, 2003
By A Customer
Bottom line, I liked the premise and enjoyed the read - that is, until I reached the end. I confess, I don't yet quite get it. In six months, once I have had a chance to reflect on the book for a little longer, "Whose truth, what truth?" may help the book come into better focus. But at this point, I simply am not sure how to interpret the end. For instance, where did large parts of the story take place - in the "real world" or in Silas' head? What was Snow's motivation for doing what she did at the end - was she mistaken about her information (re: Huxstep) and more convinced that something wasn't quite right with Silas? Ambiguity is a given in the world of intelligence, but this was a bit too ambiguous for my tastes. Fellow fans, help me out. If you can, I may come back again and revise my rating upwards. If not, then let's let a 3-star rating stand for a good book make a little too complicated for its own good.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brillant parallelism in contemporary and historic spy stories, October 4, 2009
I'm a big fan of Littell and it takes no further look than at TOAFS to see why.
Essentially, the books is a parallel exposition of a secret operation by clandestine CIA operatives directed at a foreign power and also a look back at a historicql figure we all know, Nathan Hale. The connection to Hale is because of the obsession one of the operatives has with the Hale story.
Littell is a huge fan of the "What you think is true is just a surface impression and not at all what is really there: school of writing. Another book of his, The Defection of A.J. Lewinter took that tactic to a dizzying level, and TOAFS is not too far behind. Fake-outs, games within games, and victims walking happily into traps of their own construction are at work throughout this fine work.
What makes this a 5 star book is the way Littell tells the Hale story in way never heard before, offering a completely different perspective that causes us to challenge our view of history and what history even is. At the end of the novel, the reader realizes that he did the same thing with the contemporary story.
As with TDOFAJL, there's a nice romance in here as well.
People who have watched a lot of James Bond movies may think there is nowhere else for the spy story genre to go. Littell proves them dead wrong with this book.
HIGHLY recommended.
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