Stained Glass
A Blackford Oakes Mystery

William F. Buckley Jr. is hailed as one of the top conservative writers of the 20th century. He even wrote some of Reagan’s speeches. I've been wanting to read one of his novels for some time, and picked this up at an estate sale for $1 (First edition, too!). This is the first book I've read by him,......more

I'm not usually a reader of spy or suspense type works, so I came across this with low expectations. It's the only book in the series I've read. So I don't know offhand if I missed anything by not reading the preceding. For me it got interesting in the last quarter of the book, but the slow build up......more

I’m old enough to remember a divided Germany and, very dimly, the Berlin Wall. But today’s world is rather different, so it is always interesting to read a book written during those decades of a divided Germany and a worldwide struggle between East and West. Stained Glass by William F. Buckley is on......more

Of the Oakes stories, I've found this to be one of the "heaviest" in terms of agonizing over the protagonist's dilemma. It is also one of the more deliberately-staged alternate realities or "what if" scenarios, in which a much more compelling movement for German reunification is inserted into the po......more

I'm going to be generous and give it two stars. It started out pretty good and I thought the politics/philosophy was pretty good. It basically just kept getting worse. There was an entire tedious chapter on Erika's back story that sucked, and while Blackford was supposed to be under cover with an al......more