Saving the Queen
A Blackford Oakes Mystery

Summary: The first of Buckley's Blackford Oakes espionage novels, covering his recruitment to the CIA and first mission, to ferret out the person high up in British government betraying atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Most people know William F. Buckley, Jr. as the founder of the National Review,......more

Oh, Blackie! Buckley's Blackford Oakes series is top drawer. I've read them all, and this first of the series was good enough to propel me to read all the rest. I won't review the rest--they're all good. in one of them, I forget which, there is a minor character who is an undisguised parody of Buckl......more

The first novel in a lengthy series, SAVING THE QUEEN introduces us to Blackford Oakes, a young man whose first undercover operation for the CIA takes him to 1950's England. There Oakes finds himself caught up in a game of chess between the Soviet Union and Great Britain, and the newly-minted spy qu......more

Saving the Queen By William F. Buckley This weeks classic book is the WFB's first Blackford Oakes novel. Oakes seems to have been Buckley's American answer to James Bond. The story was fast paced and interesting. Newly recruited to the CIA, Oakes is sent to the UK to try to find and eliminate an int......more

An interesting spy story if you don't take it too seriously. An American youth has a traumatic experience at a 1940s boarding school (only too believable) and "gets his own back" by getting into bed with a fictional Queen of England (somewhat less so). Unless you are very sadistic in your tastes, his......more