A Very Private Plot: A Blackford Oakes Novel [Hardcover]

William F. Buckley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1994

Blackford Oakes, director of covert operations at the CIA, finds himself under fire in Congress when he becomes embroiled in an underground plot against Mikhail Gorbachev begun by young Moscovites. 100,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Smooth and skillful, but only mildly suspenseful, the 10th Blackford Oakes adventure brings the Cold War hero into the age of glasnost and beyond. The year is 1995. Senator Hugh Blanton, who is framing a bill that would effectively ban all covert intelligence activity, subpoenas the retired Oakes to give evidence about Cyclops, a Reagan-era CIA operation that supposedly nearly drove Gorbachev to start a nuclear war. Interspersed with the narrative of Oakes's adamant refusal to testify is the true story behind Cyclops, which involves Oakes's discovery in the mid-80s that a group of young Russian patriots plan to assassinate Gorbachev. He informs Reagan of the plot, creating interesting moral dilemmas for both men: Should the president warn the head of an enemy state? Given an order with which he disagrees, does Oakes obey, or remain loyal to his Agency contacts? Urbanely written, the novel has enough information about Oakes's past to satisfy newcomers to the series and plenty of Beltway subculture references (including an appearance by Buckley himself). The plotting is strong, the story interesting and enjoyable, but Buckley raises complex ethical issues only to skate over them. A little more depth would have made this genial novel truly compelling.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

A diverting meditation on the end of the cold war featuring--perhaps for the last time, since he is 69 in this outing--Buckley's CIA man, Blackford Oakes. An ambitious, wackily idealistic senator hauls in Oakes to testify concerning his covert activities, particularly as they concerned Cyclops, the code name of a Russian informant involved in a plot, in the mid-1980s, to assassinate Gorbachev. The plot had been devised by idealistic veterans of the war in Afghanistan at a time when it seemed Gorbachev was betraying his own troops, and when it seemed, to the Reagan administration, that glasnost was just another ploy of the Evil Empire. Oakes made his ties with the young revolutionaries and then, with the summit between Gorbachev and Reagan at Reykjavik, global politics underwent a sea change. When he's called before the Senate almost 10 years later, Oakes is torn between his professional loyalty to the revolutionaries and his political loyalty to Reagan, and he refuses to testify. Oakes is thrown in jail for contempt of Congress but becomes a conservative cause c{‚}el{Š}ebre; Buckley's view, with a nod to Oliver North, is that we cannot punish the policymakers of an old era with the policies of a new era. The revolutionaries, particularly the electrical engineer Nikolai Trimov, are sympathetically drawn, and as always, Buckley moves within Washington's power circles with ease; his portrait of a gee-whizzing Ronald Reagan is affectionate and amusing. Perishable but clever, and Buckley's high wit lurks everywhere. John Mort

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition (January 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688127959
• ISBN-13: 978-0688127954
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,907,700 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, July 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Very Private Plot: A Blackford Oakes Mystery (Blackford Oakes Novel) (Paperback)

A worthy finish to the series - makes you sad there won't be more Oakes books. The real events following the completion of the book (late 1993) don't really alter how Buckley painted 1994 and 1995. A great read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best of the Series, June 23, 2008

By 

zorba (Bala Cynwyd, Pa USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Very Private Plot (Blackford Oakes Novel) (Paperback)

This is probably the best of the Blackford Oakes books and, as another reviewer noted, it's a fitting and excellent finale to a worthy series of spy thrillers involving a credible and well-crafted protagonist. This book revolves around a plot to kill Mikhail Gorbachev when he was the leader of the Soviet Union. Buckley gives us a realistic view of life in Moscow under glasnost. Usually the Oakes books tend to be tempered in their pacing -- as you would expect from Buckley -- but this one has the burner turned up a little higher. Good suspense, good characters, good plot.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good Oakes novel, entertaining dual story line, July 10, 2008

By 

Frank Catalano (Seattle) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: A Very Private Plot (Blackford Oakes Novel) (Paperback)

While not the best Blackford Oakes novel, it's readable with a moderate amount of suspense -- not necessarily about what will happen (real-life history already contraindicates the potential of the main plot line about Gorbachev), but about why it didn't happen. A nice touch is the decade-wide dual story line with Oakes being called to testify in 1995 about the events of 1986. Characterization in the Soviet story line is a tad light; too many of the characters in the 1986 thread appear interchangeable. But it's a pleasant, fast read in the series.