by Duane Spurlock
In a previous post, I’ve promoted Charles McCarry as a contemporary writer keeping alive the traditions of realistic pulp writing as it was practiced in magazines like Adventure and Blue Book. I find a difference between McCarry’s work and other contemporary pulp adventure writing -- like that of Clive Cussler, James Rollins, and the team of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child -- in the ways the writers go about representing their stories in reality. For instance, the latter-listed writers focus on larger-than-life, over-the-top characters influenced by the hero pulps (like Doc Savage, the Shadow, and so forth) and television shows like The Avengers, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, or The X-Files, as well as the James Bond series of movies. McCarry’s novels, while focusing on spycraft and politics, are more closely aligned with the real world’s events and governments. For example, you can still read some of the best stories from Adventure and Blue Book today and find writing of a different stripe than appeared in the hero pulps. Perhaps the distinction is artificial, but it suits my purposes.
Let me revise that last statement: remove the word perhaps. Because you can find elements in McCarry’s work that hark to the hero-pulp tradition. For example, take a look at the following paragraphs from Christopher’s Ghosts. This passage of the book comes from a section set in 1939 Berlin, during Paul Christopher’s childhood. McCarry has described Paul in previous books as a remarkable spy for the U.S. government. That, in itself, suggests the character is informed by heroic DNA. (Anyone for some Wold Newton investigations?) In Christopher’s Ghosts, Paul’s parents are in trouble with the Reich for their heroic activities, as noted in the first sentence below. Further, Paul’s mother, Lori, is described in terms that would make her the perfect Mrs. Clark Savage, Jr.
Also, their enemies -- the agents of the Gestapo -- represent the greatest evil super-villain of the 20th Century, the Nazi regime. Finally, Major Stutzer -- the Christophers’ bete noir -- is given a nickname, just as every pulp villain has a colorful moniker to set him apart from his fellow villains. Stutzer’s traits could easily be lifted from a list of character tags compiled by Lester Dent.
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The Christophers were suspected of crimes against the Reich, and they had in fact helped several enemies of the dictatorship to escape from Germany. There was no real need for the secret police to prove these charges. On his own authority Major Stutzer could send them to a concentration camp or even summarily execute them, but for reasons of his own he wanted to prolong the questioning, to maneuver them into full confessions. His interest in the Christophers, especially in Paul's mother, was deeply personal. They had a history. Always Stutzer's eyes were fixed on her, staring hard, when he fired his questions and threats, as if he was deeply interested in the impression he was making on her. He rarely looked at Hubbard or Paul.
The Geheime Staatspolizei, or secret state police, abbreviated as Gestapo, have been imagined by later generations as a collection of freaks, but in fact they looked like any other Germans. Stutzer was a recognizable type--bony, erect, triangular face, long nose, thin wet pink lips, quick mind. He spoke educated German. He was not, however, educated in the sense that Lori Christopher was educated. She spoke German, French and English with equal fluency. She knew Latin and ancient Greek and had read the greatest books in all those languages, she recognized almost any European musical work immediately and played the piano expertly, she knew painting and sculpture as well as she knew music, she had memorized the poetry of Goethe and other giants of German letters, she remembered mathematics through the calculus. Stutzer had no need for such a body of knowledge. As Hubbard said, secret policemen were like all tribal peoples--they might not know a lot, but they all knew the same things. The Christophers called Major Stutzer Major Dandy because Dandy was what his surname meant in English and because he was almost comically dapper.
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Although the dust jackets of another writer, Alan Furst, carry blurbs describing him as “widely recognized as the master of the historical spy novel,” McCarry better qualifies as following the tradition of American adventure writing. Furst’s style draws more on the tradition of the British spy novel -- we can perhaps use as an example the spy novel as written by Graham Greene. Furst is a master of creating an atmospheric setting weighted with melancholy and foreboding, and he writes conversations that sound more real than those of Elmore Leonard’s novels.
On the other hand, McCarry focuses on storytelling in the mode of those directed by pulp magazine editors -- “Tell a good story!” -- with a narrative energy that follows the classical traditional requirements of plot and character. While Furst’s tales (which, don’t get me wrong, are very good) seem more a series of character snapshots assembled to form a portrait of an event or series of events, McCarry wraps us in characters’ histories and anecdotes to spin a story with a climax and an ending. His style doesn’t get in the way of his storytelling -- in fact, one doesn’t notice his style, which is praise due the best storytellers. The reader reaches the end of a McCarry novel with a sense of closure. That’s not always true at the end of a Furst novel.
I first encountered McCarry by reading his 2004 novel, Old Boys (another novel that features Paul Christopher and his cousin, fellow-spy Hubbard, and the enigmatic and remarkable Lori Christopher). After that, I followed up by starting to read McCarry’s preceding novels in reverse order. Shelley’s Heart (1997) is an engaging story about a disputed Presidential election (published three years before the scandal of hanging chads) and the ways political extremism and polarizing political partisanship can derail the traditions of democracy; it also describes Hubbard’s role in a scandal and his eventual disgrace. Second Sight (1991) is a wild romp (worthy of the pages of Adventure or Blue Book) involving Paul, an exotic psychic who knew his parents in Berlin, his lost daughter, a community that may be a lost tribe of Israel, and a plot by Arab terrorists; some critics complained that this novel was too unrealistic, but I found it very entertaining and enjoyable; only an accomplished storyteller could manage to wrap together so many plot strands convincingly.
Consider also McCarry's background -- a secret career as an actual spy for the CIA, with his public career as a magazine writer (for Time, Life, National Geographic, and more) his cover.
And now back to McCarry’s latest, Christopher’s Ghosts, which again examines the mysteries of Paul’s mother during his childhood years in Berlin, then flashes forward to 1959 in the same city, before the building of the Berlin Wall. In 1939, Paul meets his first love, the daughter of a Jewish doctor. In the second half of the novel, Paul -- now an agent of The Outfit (McCarry’s version of the CIA) -- hunts down Major Dandy, who hasn’t escaped the war unscathed, but who still plots and destroys. McCarry brings in characters from other novels, building not only a family saga that chronicles the secret career of Paul Christopher but also a history of the 20th Century’s public and secret wars.
Shorter -- and darker -- than some of McCarry’s previous works, Christopher’s Ghosts is an excellent and entertaining addition to the Christopher history. I recommend it to any pulp fans looking for a contemporary continuance of the pulp storytelling tradition.
Links:
Fans of McCarry and of spy fiction will be pleased by Overlook Press’ efforts to bring the Paul Christopher saga back into print. You can find these all at Amazon.com.
Christopher’s Ghosts
Posted by ds at September 6, 2007 07:47 PM
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