Schism [Hardcover]

Bill Granger (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 310 pages
• Publisher: Random House Value Publishing; 1st edition (December 12, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517544911
• ISBN-13: 978-0517544914
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,635,196 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars another winner from granger, March 6, 2006

By 

Christopher Gwyn (over there) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Schism (Hardcover)

Deveroux's back! R Section operative Deveroux, code name November returns in the second installment of Bill Granger's often overlooked spy series. After a Catholic priest wanders out of the jungles of Thailand after having disappeared 20 years earlier and into the custody of the U.S. embassy in Bangkok, a power strugglw between the CIA, the Soviets, and the Vatican Intelligence network ensues to silence Father Leo Tunney.Years earlier Tunney was working in Souyheast Asia on behalf of the CIA. Tunney knows secrets that would be damaging to the previously mentioned parties. Enter Deveroux, sent to find out what a reporter named Rita Macklin knows about the resurfaced Father Tunney after she had managed to take a photo of him while in custody of CIA. Macklin is roughed up by agency goons and warned off of the story. Deveroux, pretending to be a vacationing reporter, wins the trust of Macklin in Florida where Father Tunney has taken up residence in a local diocese. It turns out that Tunney is writing a tell-all journal about his time in the war ravaged jungle and all factions will stop at nothing to stop him. A woman claims Tunney miraculously heals her while reciting the forbidden Latin Mass which leads to a whirlwind of media attention, causing panic among the interested parties who would have the most to lose if Tunney's journal were to see the light of day.After meeting up once again with KGB nemesis Denisov, Deveroux is caught in the middle of a race to possess the journal. The story moves toward a very satisfying conclusion with all the various loose ends tied up and explained. The relationship between the hardened and jaded Deveroux and the idealistic reporter Macklin is realistically drawn in a world where there is never only black and white, but varying shades of grey. This second in the long running November man line is thrilling and gritty in its portrayel of the shadowy world that Deveroux inhabits.

3.0 out of 5 stars Better novel than NOVEMBER MAN, but still not really good, September 17, 2011

By 

Douglas J. Bassett (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Schism (Hardcover)

The second book in Granger's "November Man" series, which was really, essentially, an attempt to combine the action-based spy story with the John Le Carre "spy story as malaise of the soul". There were a lot of attempts to do that during this period, most of them taking Le Carre and trying, with varying degrees of success, to blend in the action. This is a better effort than the debut, THE NOVEMBER MAN, in that it's much more controlled and better focused. NOVEMBER MAN always felt like it was near to careening off the edge of a cliff, this feels like Granger had learned the requisite lessons of his first book and compensated accordingly. It's biggest fault is that it's not really a spy book (that is, a book about spies) or a suspense thriller (that is, a novel that attempts to build suspense or thrills). It is instead a rather murky book about faith and the loss of it, all sort of tangled up with some Catholic guilt (of the "lapsed Catholic who still on some level wants to believe" ilk). This leads to the uncomfortable feeling as you're reading it that on some level you've been rooked: you wanted to read a book about spies double-crossing each other, what you got was some guy agonizing about who and what to believe in, with a bit of spy stuff thrown in to wash it all down.