Customer Reviews

The Once and Future Spy

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

A previous reviewer commented that the interwovcen tale of Nathan Hale "detracted" from the overall experience. I'd completely disagree, and found that it created an excellent parallel to the main plotline. He should perhaps re-read and see how it relates.

Aside from that, it's a page-turner that I found to be more a conspiracy thriller than a true spy novel (but maybe because he's "reinventing the spy novel" as some of the cover reviews claim). It also felt quite believeable as I can imagine various administrations attempting something along the lines of the scheme occuring in this book.

I read the book 3 years ago and just finished re-reading it yesterday.

It has the fairy-tale quality I like so much in works of Cold War era writers - Graham Greene is the perfect example. The mythology is here - or mythologies since the book also deals with a patriot spy of 2 centuries ago. Sometimes the author seems to be unsure of our ability to draw the parallel and elaborates a bit too much on the things that are already evident.

But later in the book Robert Littell goes to another extreme - he regretfully overcomplicates the ending, in a rush to make his work a kind of Chinese box - "whose truth? which truth?" - he shies from the possible and feasible happy end - and finishes in a hasty hopelessness.

Still the book is very, very good in it's unique way. Highly recommended.

How could the author of so great a book as "The Company" draft such a mediocre cliche-ridden effort as this. One reason, I submit, is that he couldn't make up his mind if he wanted to write a historical novel or a spy novel. He had a similar dilemma in "An Agent in Place" where he couldn't decide whether he wanted to write a love story or a spy story. "The Company" was a whole dimension above most spy novels. "The Once and Future Spy," sadly, is simply a uninspired work. The plot was highly improbable, the characters lacked credibility, and Littell resorted to too many cheap plot tricks to speed the book along, at the cost of believeability. Even the whole theme of "whose truth?" also is not all that unique. Don't want to give the ending away so I won't say any more about that except that, personally, I found the ending to be highly unsatisfying. I still have a few more Littell books to read and I am hoping that I will get from them the deep pleasure I got from "The Company." Littell's capable of much much better work than reflected in this novel.

a sometimes bizarre book.Memorable and menacing characters from the best writer of cold war era novels. Impossible to easily define but very satisfying. Action runs between parallel exploration of espionage then and now but thats not the quarter of it. History book, spy novel- one of those 'give it to your friends straight away so you're not alone with the knowledge' books and above all well written. The antidote to all the 'hunt the serial killer'writing-by-numbers.

No, "Weird" is not a term usually associated with a book review, but it's difficult to think of a better one-word description here.

This book is so convoluted, and much of it rather illogical,
that it is hard to believe the same author has written the
complex, detailed and fascinating book, "The Company." This one must have been some sort of practice run.

As we read through it, there are interesting parts, but we keep
thinking as we go along that the author will surely bring it all
together in a satisfying way. But he never does. There is an
ending of sorts, but the story never quite comes together. And many of us will not be wishing there was more, we will, instead,
be wishing we had spent our time more profitably.

The story, on the surface, is about an ultra-secret project by
a handful of CIA operatives working outside even that organization, with the direction and approval of the Attorney General, and the aim of this project is to sow discord in the

heart of one of our Muslim enemy countries, while also bringing
into disrepute everything that country stands for. A laudable
goal, and a very nice starting point for this type novel.

But the author insists on intermixing with that story another,
and parallel, story about Nathan Hale during our Revolution
against the British Empire. The Hale story is quite far-fetched, so it detracts rather than adds to the central theme.

With the shifts in both era and story, this is not exciting, but
rather distracting. Not a very well-put-together story and ultimately dissatisfying.

I must admit I didn't make it through 100 pages. I had good intentions, made it through the first 40 or so, then promised that I would pick up again 'later.' It's now been a couple of weeks and I've made every excuse that I could think of, before realizing that it's not you -- it's me. So I must with reluctance (but relief) consign this book to the box in the basement marked "goodwill."

spy novels generally isn't my thing, but I try to read across genres to broaden my own craft as a writer. This book was ok, good story line, but very boring. Too many adverbs, leading to telling not showing. The characters were believable but the character development was very poor. There was not much deliniation between personalities. If you are into spy novels, I'd recommend author Ron Adams.