Old Boys

As a younger man, my idea of a great spy novel was Robert Littell's "The Amateur" (1981) or James Grady's "Six Days of the Condor" (1974), tales about young men, inexperienced in the ways of espionage agents, who get the best of veterans. Now, an "old boy" myself, I am nuts about "Old Boys" (2004), written by Charles McCarry when he was about the same age I am now. His novel is about veteran CIA agents who should be retired but instead team up to find an old friend (and his mother) and prevent a nuclear terrorist attack on U.S. cities.

So maybe my taste in espionage thrillers is a reflection of my stage of life, why I would rather watch movies starring Robert Redford, Tom Hanks, Morgan Freeman or Harrison Ford than ones starring any show more younger actor you might name. Or maybe all three are terrific novels. When I reread "Six Days of the Condor" recently, I enjoyed it just as much as I did back in the Seventies.

McCarry has been writing Paul Christopher novels since the Seventies (and I loved "The Tears of Autumn" and "The Secret Lovers," too). In Old Boys, Christopher is in his seventies when he learns that his mother, who disappeared during World War II, may still be alive. And so he disappears, too. When ashes purported to be his are sent back from China, his old friends don't believe it. Horace Hubbard, Christopher's cousin, takes the lead, and he and the other geezers travel back and forth across the globe tracking down the Christophers, while at the same time preventing an even older terrorist from getting his dying wish, the destruction of America.

The novel includes a reference to The Over the Hill Gang. This story is similar to that old movie, but without the laughs. These Old Boys manage to stay a step ahead of much younger men, who keep trying to discourage them and send them back to retirement homes. Of these younger agents, McCarry writes, "Little did they know that they had just been extricated from the mess they had gotten themselves into by a bunch of arthritic, pill-taking old men who last saw combat before these kids' fathers were born."

As an arthritic, pill-taking old man, I found that great fun. show less

"The Old Boys" by Charles McCarry is a brilliantly detailed, artfully written spy novel in the series centering on one-time intelligence agent, Paul Christopher. When Paul's cousin, Horace Christopher Hubbard receives a "nice red-and-gilt urn" purportedly containing Paul's ashes, he reflects on the last time he had seen his cousin. Paul had urged upon him the alarm code and key to his house with instructions to repair to a hidden safe for instructions as the executor of his will should he not return in a year or upon his death. The will sets forth several tasks, finding and destroying three portable nuclear devices and the terrorist who has them, finding his mother Lori, and retrieving a priceless ancient manuscript which turns out to show more be a spymaster's account of the life of Christ and the teachings of St. Paul.
Not believing that his cousin is dead, Horace with the help of Asian specialist, David Wong, "invited four white-haired old cut-throats," Jack Philindros, former director of "the outfit," Ben Childress, "who knew Arabs and Arabia in the way a baseball fanatic knows batting averages," Harley Waters, former recruiter of Soviet bloc agents, and Charley Hornblower, who knew a lot about codes and arcane languages and the mind of man" to join them in finding Paul and saving the world from a nuclear holocaust.
They do. show less

What happened Mr. McCarry? This is a simple-minded action flick, nothing like your old work. The characters coud be cartoons. The explosions are big, locals exotic, and villians more Bond-like than your old adversaries. Did you really write this?

I'd heard lots about McCarry and this series, and was interested this. At times Paul Christopher is a bit too enigmatic for me to really grasp, but his cousin's devotion is touching-- indeed the whole family is devoted, in an isolated, loner kind of way. I particularly liked learning so much about falconry and hawks.

McCarry (Tears of Autumn) comes out of retirement and brings back the Old Boys from 'The Outfit' (aka the CIA). His storied agent Paul Christopher comes back from the dead - well, once at least.

The Old Boys are a bunch of retired spooks trying to find Christopher and the terrorist Ibn Awad and something called the Amphora Scroll - a Roman document from an Imperial agent in Palestine regarding the exploitation of the activities of one Joshua ben Joseph - aka Jesus. Christopher is seeking his now 94-year-old mother and guess what she has. The story traces her history as Reinhard Heydrich's involuntary concubine, her escape, and her life in hiding in southwest Asia.

Back in the present Paul's cousin, Horace Hubbard leads the search for show more Christopher and Ibn Awad...oh, and of course the nukes. The story leads across just about every continent and several historical eras, which is both part of its charm and its weakness. Things get a might complicated and the plot is stretched, but it's a good tale with a funny twist at the end.

Recommended for fans of the spy and adventure genres. show less

A very enjoyable novel about a group of old spies out for one last mission. I particularly liked the main character, especially his way of describing his own actions in a "modest" way; in other words, he is very good at what he does, but tries to conceal this to some extent. The book reminded me of the existence of Charles McCarry who wrote some of the best American spy novels of all time (especially The Last Supper and The Tears of Autumn).

Interesting how cleverly McCarrey introduces "radical" interpretation of the historical Christ through the guise of a newly found, ancient scroll.