The Secret Lovers

My husband and I are continuing to read and enjoy this spy series. The Secret Lovers is the third one. Its title turned out to have a double meaning. Several characters are double agents. Many have relationships that go back a long way, including to the Spanish Civil War and even to the Russian Rev......more

This is the second Charles McCarry novel in the Paul Christopher series that I've read, and it had more twists and turns than any roller coaster I remember holding on to for dear life. It is 1960 and Christopher, a polyglot CIA agent working in Covert Action (CA), has met on a West Berlin street in......more

Charles McCarry meets the kind of Goldilocks/middlebrow standard I look for in spy novels: not too complex, not too simple, not too jingoistic, not too cynical. Juuuuust right. This is the third I've read of his Paul Christopher series and like the last two, the plot gripped me. It's a deep plot but......more

I'm a big fan of Charles McCarry's The Tears of Autumn and The Last Supper. So when a friend urged me to read The Secret Lovers next, I was primed to go. From the outset I was disappointed at the painfully slow pace at which the various story lines unfolded. Le Carre mastered the art of the excrucia......more

A great, old-school spy novel by the wonderful Charles McCarry. The 'Secret Lovers' is a look at a complex investigation back in the Cold War era using techniques that involved more thinking than today's data-based approach. Interesting plot, steady pace, great characters, fine tradecraft, tremendou......more