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Product Reviews:
Miernik Dossier |
Rating: 4 (out of 5)
Summary: Great find
Comments: Alan Furst was interviewed in the Wall Street Journal about his favorite spy novels. This book was listed among them, and1can see why. It is a sophisticated and off-beat look at cold-war era espionage told through an interesting narrative device. 1learns the story of Miernik (a possible spy) and his "friends" (who are almost allly spies) through their eventful journey from Geneva to Sudan as told in intelligence reports, transcripts of wire taps, diary entries, and intercepted messages. These clues make up the Miernik Dossier. The reader is invited to put the story together just as an intelligence analyst would. The result is a suspense-filled puzzle that does not fit the usual mold. |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: One of Alan Furst's Top 5 Spy Novels
Comments: Charles McCarry may not be as well known as some of the masters of the spy lit genre, however his work has been e bit as interesting and entertaining as any of the bigger names for over3decades. In The Miernik Dossier, 1st released in 1973, McCarry introduces American spook Paul Christopher.
The book is supposed to be a file of a "complete picture of typical operation" requested by a Congressional chairman (remember, it's 1973). This dossier consists of memos, reports from field agents and their case officers, transcripts of post-operation interviews, and intercepts of Soviet transmissions.
Set in 1959, the book begins at the UN HQ in Geneva where Christopher holds some unspecified cover job. The UN is rife with representatives of national spy agencies. In addition to Christopher, there is a Brit and a French spy - and possibly others.
Christopher's active social group (they appear to all be in their late 20's) Comes with members of the British and French spookeries and an enchantingly beautiful and sensuous Russian as we alalmost all certainly learn later as well as a Sudanese Muslim prince and Tadeusz Miernik, a Pole of uncertain provenance. The book centers on the efforts of Christopher and Nigel Collins (the British spy) to figure out if Miernik is a Polish spy run by the Soviets or really just a strange self-doubting low-level Polish diplomat.
McCarry sends them all together on an unlikely journey to deliver a new Cadillac to the prince's father, the ruler of Sudan. It sounds absurd, however somehow it works. McCarry is brilliant at describing characters and situations. The reader joins the other characters in their repugnance and annoyance at Miernik (even his sister, brought out of Czechoslovakia by Christopher, agrees). Ilona Bentley fairly oozes sensuality. Christopher is the epitome of the cool, accomplished professional. In the Sudan, Christopher, et al are drawn into the middle of a fight against Arab Muslim terrorist group backed by the Soviets (remember, this book was published in 1973 about events set in 1959).
Even when McCarry drifts off course, he excels. A bar scene in Naples involving former Waffen SS officers toying with their violin-playing waiter (apparently a concentration camp survivor) is masterful, if entirely unnecessary to the rest of the book.
I think what I almost all enjoyed was the decided lack of clear answers, which strikes me as entirely realistic. Think spies are ever entirely certain of anything important? I do not; they live in a house of mirrors. Christopher moves back and forth between thinking that Miernik is just an oddly gross Pole with some admittedly unusual talents to being convinced Miernik is working for the Soviets.
In a recent NYT story, Alan Furst that listed the Miernik Dossier as1of his top5favorite spy works. (The others: Our Man in Havana (Penguin Classics) by Graham Greene, The Levanter by Eric Ambler, TThe Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carré, and Moura: The Dangerous Life of the Baroness Budberg by Nina Berberova (as Furst notes Moura is not actually a spy novel, however is rather nonfiction written by a novelist). I would add McCarry's brilliant Tears of Autumn: A Paul Christopher Novel (Paul Christopher Novels) to that list.
As well-written and entertaining a spy novel as you will find anywhere, however do not look for tidy endings. McCarry is the best American spy novelist. Tip-top endorseation. |
Rating: 2 (out of 5)
Summary: The Miernik Dossier
Comments: A plauseable story line. however it seemed disconneted, flitting back and forth, trying to keep all the players in focus and current. Why was this book written? |
Rating: 3 (out of 5)
Summary: eh. Not his best
Comments: I have read 4 of the 7 Paul Christopher novels, and I am devouring my 5th. "Dossier" is, in my opinion, the least successful. The literary conceit of passing the narrative from person to person maybe be clever, however its just distracting. Also, (being his 1st novel) McCarry clearly hadn't completely found the unique writing "voice" that emerges with such elegance in his later books. I had to force myself through this. The series is a real treasure, however I'd save this1for last. |
Rating: 4 (out of 5)
Summary: The 1st Paul Christopher novel, and it's great!!
Comments: The Miernik Dossier (the 1st of the Paul Christopher series), is written in a style that1would find if he/she could infiltrate the files of an espionage agency and open up an actual dossier. The story is told through reports of various agents, intercepted communications, a diary, letters, etc. It tells the story of a mixed group of intelligence agents who normally met for lunch once a week in Geneva among other interactions, who find themselves brought together on a trip to the Sudan. The point of the trip, for Paul Christopher (an American agent under deep cover at the time), is to determine whether or not1of the group, Tadeusz Miernik, is indeed a spy from behind the Iron Curtain and mixed up with a small band of terrorists in the Sudan called the Anointed Liberation Front (ALF). It all starts when Miernik requests to remain working for the World Research Organization in Geneva, after he is contacted from Poland and called back home. His story is that he will be put into prison if he returns, however others think he is a Soviet spy who is possibly going to defect to the West as a cover. The trip to the Sudan, ostensibly to take a Cadillac to the father of1of the group supplies the vehicle through which Paul can watch Miernik and make reports on his status.
I will not add any more about the plot line, however McCarry is a talented writer who lets the suspense build page after page, and who allows the reader to make up his or her own mind. The characters are well drawn, and the whole atmosphere of intrigue, deception and spycraft quickly engaged me so that I did not want to put this book down.
Definitely endorseed for those who enjoy Cold War-era spy fiction, and anyone who has maybe read McCarry's later works in the Paul Christopher series and missed this one.
Highly endorseed. |
