“As soon as he began publishing fiction more than three decades ago, Charles McCarry was recognized as a spy novelist of uncommon gifts” wrote Charles Trueheart in The Washington Post. Tears of Autumn, McCarry’s riveting novel of espionage and foreign affairs, was a major bestseller upon its first publication in 1975. Spun with unsettling plausibility from the events surrounding the assassination … assassination of John F. Kennedy, and featuring Paul Christopher, it’s a tour de force of action and enigma. Christopher, at the height of his powers, believes he knows who arranged the assassination, and why. His theory is so destructive of the legend of the dead president, though, and so dangerous to the survival of foreign policy that he is ordered to desist from investigating. But he is a man who lives by, and for, the truth–and his internal compunctions force him to the heart of the matter. Christopher resigns from the Agency and embarks on a tour of investigation that takes him from Paris to Rome, Zurich, the Congo, and Saigon.
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Some of my favorite novels are blended genre ones that both comfortably inhabit yet also cleverly expand both. Charles McCarry’s The Tears Of Autumn pulls this off by creating a pitch perfect Mad Men era CIA spy main character who finds himself suddenly compelled to take on the role of homicide detective. The murder victim: President John F. Kennedy. Written with panache and aplomb this delightfully twisty thriller is a true five star plus classic from the first to the last page.
“Just the straightforward, inarguable truth: Charles McCarry is the greatest espionage writer that America has ever produced.” — Otto Penzler, New York Sun, 2004
I had never heard of Charles McCarry until I read a Washington Post story documenting his death in 2019 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/charles-mccarry-cia-officer-who-became-a-pre-eminent-spy-novelist-dies-at-88/2019/02/28/9696b2f0-3b77-11e9-a2cd-307b06d0257b_story.html), but was intrigued enough by the above quote found in the story to order a copy of McCarry’s first novel, Tears of Autumn.
Wow.
How did I not find this man until now? The book, written in 1974, holds up as well as any novel written today. The writing is sparse, but not thin. His descriptions aren’t as lush as say Dean Koontz but they don’t need to be. His settings are clear, his characters deep. It’s Tom Clancy before Tom Clancy and without the clutter of all the technology (which is one of the only reasons to read Clancy who is also one of my favorites).
Yes, I really enjoyed Tears of Autumn. I highly recommend it.
McCarry – like John LeCarre and Daniel Silva – is known as one of those authors who “gets it right” with his spy yarns. The Tears of Autumn is his second novel and the second to feature his series character Paul Christopher, a CIA agent active during the 1950s and 1960s. In this installment, Christopher decides to solve the JFK assassination. Nothing like swinging for the fences, eh?
Even though Christopher flirts with super-agenthood – speaking multiple languages, near-photographic memory, dangerously handsome, culturally sensitive, etc. – he’s not a one-man killing machine like his counterparts in spy thrillers (which this isn’t). He doesn’t carry a gun, hardly kills anyone at all, and talks (or buys) his way into and out of trouble rather than blowing up things. This is spy work closer to how spies really work. The old-school (pre-9/11) received spy wisdom was if you kill someone, you’ve blown your cover and you’re done.
McCarry’s depiction of Christopher’s stops in this 1963-64 travelogue (D.C., Saigon, Paris, Rome, Zermatt) are atmospheric and evocative without slowing things down; his settings remind me of Alan Furst’s, lightly drawn but presenting enough detail to feel authentic. Similarly, Christopher’s spycraft is described with confidence without descending into textbookism. Since McCarry was a CIA case officer for several years, we have some assurance that what his characters do is as real as he could get past the CIA’s censors.
The downside? This novel is emotionally chilly; even when Christopher is supposed to be contemplating his internal demons or an unexpected chance at love, it feels as if he’s doing it because he thinks he’s supposed to rather than because he’s compelled to do it. It’s also fairly short and travels in a straight line. Christopher formulates a theory about the JFK assassination (which he doesn’t share with us) at the beginning and follows it without many twists or turns straight through to being proven right. This isn’t a thriller (Our Hero isn’t often in imminent mortal danger) nor is it a mystery; it’s a spy procedural, an exercise in watching a skilled operative do his thing, step-by-step, in a turbulent time. It’s fascinating, but it’s neither moving nor exciting.
The Tears of Autumn is almost British in its reserve, LeCarre with an American protagonist. If you want explosions and global conspiracies, there are plenty of other authors to turn to. If you want to see an ideal real-world covert agent do his job at the height of the Cold War and want to go places other than London and Berlin, McCarry’s your man.
Charles McCarry is a less well-known spy novelist than le Carre or Deighton, but belongs in the same conversation even if “Tears of Autumn” was the only book he published. McCarry’s protagonist Paul Christopher is somewhere between superhuman (e.g. ability to pick up almost any language–even tonal ones–in a month or two) and all-too-human (e.g. his feelings for his Australian lover). The pace is fast, the settings described in sufficient detail to convince the reader that McCarry knows them firsthand and JFK’s assassination is the number one conspiracy of modern times.
Where McCarry really shines is in the nuanced plotting and layered reveals that keep the reader riveted even if the basics of Christopher’s take on Kennedy’s murder have been known almost from the outset.
“Tears of Autumn” stands alongside the best of spy novels of the modern era.
A well-written spy novel with a creative theory as to who might have hatched the plot for assassinating President Kennedy.